What's Under The Hats
by Resonanceme37
Summary: The Tyrant is countries away from ruling the entire world. Planet Earth has been devstated by poverty and disease. The resistance is the last ray of hope for the world the way it once was, but it can't succeed on it's own, it needs help. From the past. Who exactly? And who is this... Tyrant? I know, but you don't. Yet.
1. Consiquences Of Overconfidence

A young fourth grade boy stepped up to home plate, waiting for the pitcher to roll the ball toward him. He felt confident in his team and in himself. Perhaps a little too confident, but right now he'd need to harness all of that confidence and use it to his advantage. Losing was not an option for him. Normally this boy wouldn't care if he won or lost. He wasn't a bad sport or anything like that. Normally if he just enjoyed the game, he was content with anything, however there was more than just a simple reputation at stake here. Much more.

"You're goin' down T Jerk!" the pitcher yelled at him.

"In your dreams Lawson!" the boy yelled back. It wasn't the best of his counters, but he was concentrating hard on the kickball that was being pitched in his direction. "And my name's not T Jerk," the boy muttered under his breath as the ball advanced toward him, bouncing slightly on the uneven surface of the kickball field. "it's TJ Detweiler". With that TJ kicked the ball with all the strength he could muster.

It was an amazing kick. The ball soared beautifully in a broad rainbow arch. TJ was dumbfounded by his own kick. He stood in a daze at home base for a second or two, then coming back to his senses, began running as fast as he could toward first base.

"Catch it!" Yelled Lawson to his outfielders, unheard over the cheers coming from the crowd of bystanders and TJ's team mates.

TJ was nearing third base by the time the ball touched the ground. It had landed outside of the school's perimeter fence, making the kick a home run. TJ didn't hear the huge cheer that erupted from the crowd, he was concentrating on home base. As he scored a point for his team, TJ jumped in the air and let out a whoop of triumph. His first kick of the game had been a home run, and he barely ever kicked homers. 'If this is the way things are going to be' thought TJ, 'it's going to be the shortest game of kickball Third Street School has ever known. The first team to five points wins!'

It looked like it was going to be the shortest game of kickball Third Street School had ever seen. That didn't mean that it was TJ's team who was winning. It had only been ten minutes and the score was now two to four. Any confidence that TJ had had at the beginning of the game had diminished. Lawson only needed one more point to win, and it looked like he was going to get it. His team's best kicker was up and Lawson was on second base.

"We're gonna cream you Detweiler!" TJ heard Lawson yell behind him.

"Man, this whomps". It was one of those rare moments when TJ knew that Lawson was probably telling the truth. He wasn't going to resign though. No way. Not to  
Lawson. Reluctantly, TJ took a deep breath, and pitched the kickball. He closed his eyes as the kicker's foot made contact with the ball. He forced himself to open them and immediately wished he hadn't. the ball was soaring through the air much like his own kick at the beginning of the game, only this one was higher and wasn't going to fly that far. It would land in the outfield just about where he realised his friend Gus was positioned.

"Gus!" TJ yelled "the ball's coming your way, try to catch it!"

"Huh?" said Gus, who had been previously day dreaming. He was currently looking at what appeared to be TJ doing an impression of a demented windmill with an anxiety problem, when something small and red above him caught his attention. He couldn't understand why it appeared to be getting bigger and bigg- WHAM. Gus was knocked to the ground. "Oh." he said, irritated at the fact that he was only just now gripping the situation.

TJ groaned and hid his face in his hands as Lawson ran over home plate, whooping and hollering.

"I won! I won! I won!" cheered Lawson. After triumphing in his victory, and rubbing it in everyone's faces, he walked over to TJ. "Ok T Jerk hand it over"

"Hand what over?" asked TJ planning to stall for as much time as he could.

"Forget our deal already doufus?" said Lawson.

"I'm afraid I have. Do you care to refresh my memory?" TJ smiled falsely, knowing he couldn't stall for much longer.

"If you got to five first, I'd leave you and your friends alone for the year. If I got to five first, which I did, I got the cap".

"My cap?" TJ continued stalling, firmly placing both hands on his head to prevent Lawson from taking his signature red baseball cap. Only TJ knew that it was more than just his trademark. A whole lot more.

"It's my cap now doufus" Lawson grinned. He reached out to claim his prize.

TJ knew time was up and he ran faster than he knew he could, but he knew Lawson was right on his heels. he could also hear the rest of the playground not too far behind him. As TJ began to clear some ground between Lawson and himself, an idea began to form in his mind. He would tell Ms. Finster that Lawson had turned the playground into an angry mob. he ran to the school's back doors as fast as he could. "Ms. Finster!" He screamed desperately. "Lawson turned the whole playground into an angry mob and they're all coming after me!"

The old woman grinned. "Nice try Mr. Detweiler but Randall here," she gestured to the hunchback beside her, "told me you made a deal. You owe Mr. Lawson that hat of yours".

TJ wanted to tear his hair out. Nothing was working! He turned to run back only to find that the blacktop in between the two wings of the school was crammed with every kid out at recess. Including Lawson. Now knowing that he was trapped, TJ was beginning to panic. They had no idea what they were taking off of his head! It wasn't because it was his trademark that he didn't want it taken off of him, neither was it because the cap meant so much to him. It wasn't even because it would be Lawson wearing it. Even though he did care about the cap and who was wearing it, that wasn't nearly as important as the reason he was running away. Lawson advanced toward TJ, who tried to back away, but tripped on his shoelace and fell backwards onto the concrete steps leading into the building.

"Gimme my hat Detweiler" Lawson smiled evilly.

"No!" exclaimed TJ "I wont!".

"You will! Give it here, now!"

"You don't know what your doing Lawson!"

"I'm taking what's rightfully mine!". Lawson grabbed the hat. TJ was going hysterical. He was crying and screaming and trying to kick Lawson away, but to no success. TJ kept a grip of steel on the lid of his cap while Lawson pulled with all of his strength on the snaps. Tug of war began and chaos insued on the blacktop.

Everyone was either chanting "TJ! TJ! TJ!" or LAWSON! LAWSON! LAWSON!"

It was Lawson who eventually won. As he removed the red cap from TJ's head, the fourth grader's tears stopped dripping. the screaming ceased. Lawson wasn't getting kicked anymore. TJ had gone completely limp. Everyone had just assumed he was lying down, crying over his defeat.

"I have beaten the great TJ Detweiler!" Lawson screamed out to the crowd, all of whom were either yelling out in anger at their friend's defeat or cheering for Lawson.

Of all the people on the blacktop, only Randall saw what was really happening to TJ.

"Uh, Ms. Finster..." he said tugging on the old woman's sleeve.

She looked over her shoulder to find the source of the tugging. "What is it Randall.. MY STARS!"

With that the whole blacktop looked at TJ and gasped. Silence.

Lawson was angry. Why was everyone looking at the Detweiler kid instead of him? He wheeled around and saw a sight that would haunt him for the rest of his life. TJ had gone deathly pale. His blue eyes had turned black and were rolling up into their sockets. They were also beginning to glow. A vigorous twitching began in TJ's left leg.

Lawson threw the cap at TJ and ran away in terror, screaming all the way. By sheer dumb luck it fell on his head. Immediately, TJ's eyes rolled down, stopped glowing, and became blue again. His skin darkened to it's normal shade of peach, and the twitching ceased. TJ blinked a few times and stood up. He saw the sea of terrified faces staring at him. There was in fact only one person in the school not staring at him, and he was pushing through the crowd screaming, trying to get away from him. TJ remembered what had happened. Lawson had taken his hat off of him. That meant everyone here must have seen what he was like without the cap. 'They all must think I'm a freak' he thought. TJ walked down the steps and started to walk into the crowd, which instantly cleared a path for him. None of them wanted to be anywhere near him. TJ turned his cap into the forward position, pulled the lid down to cover his face and the tears that were welling up in his eyes, and began to run. He wanted to get away from the stares. He wanted to be alone.

TJ didn't notice the other five people trying to get out of the crowd. These five fourth graders wanted to comfort their friend, however, they also wanted a good explanation of what they had just seen.


	2. Our Little Secret

TJ was sitting with his head down at an old picnic table in the abandoned playground. He was crying into his arms. 'why?' he thought, 'why did I ever make that stupid deal? why was it so dang important to me in the first place?'

TJ heard his friends calling out for him. He could hear the "TJ, where are you?" echoing around the whole area. He didn't want them to find him. He knew they had questions, he didn't want to have to answer them though. He wanted to curl up in a corner and stay there for the rest of his life, but he knew that wasn't an option. His friends were getting closer. He could now hear the sound of footsteps through the taller grass near the playground. Couldn't a fellow just be left alone if they ask? Was a little peace and quiet too much to ask for? Of course it was. He was unfortunately just going to have to get this done and over with. He hated explaining the whole cap thing. It made him feel like he didn't belong, different in a negative way. Like he wasn't human. His friends were entering the abandoned playground now, he could hear them rustling through the bushes at it's edge.

"Yo, Teej!" He heard Spinelli call out to him.

"Told you he'd be here" he could hear Vince say.

This was followed by the sound of five pairs of running footsteps coming towards him. The table shifted slightly as TJ's friends all sat down around him.

"TJ, are you ok?" asked Gus.

"What does it look like?" TJ responded, lifting his head up. His face was bright red from crying and a tear was making it's way down his cheek. He sniffed.

"We're here for you TJ" said Spinelli. "but we also want answers".

'Well maybe I don't feel like giving them!' TJ wanted so badly to scream out at her, but he knew it wouldn't make the situation any better, and he knew he'd have to explain it to his friends at one point or another. He stopped himself from crying as much as he could, rubbed his eyes, and lifted himself up off the table. "What do you wanna know?" he croaked, his throat sore from all the screaming he had done and the much more recent crying.

"First of all," said Gretchen, "explain to us, what is it about your hat that you treasure so greatly?".

TJ sighed. "I need to go back to kindergarten to explain that".

The others gasped.

"Kindergarten?" Gus asked.

TJ nodded. "Kindergarten. Remember the day my hat blew away and I chased it all recess?". A few of his friends giggled at remembering TJ chasing after his red baseball cap in vain. Gus of course had no idea.

"You disappeared" said Vince "where'd you go?"

"I followed my hat" TJ said. "here".

"Here?" the others asked

"Well, technically speaking it was over there," TJ gestured toward the center of the playground. "But yeah, here. Remember the bolt of lightning?"

The others nodded. How could they forget? It had all been so close. The thunder had been deafening and everyone's hair had stood on end for days.

"I was standing in the center of this playground, which was where my hat just happened to stop blowing around, and I had just put it back on my head, but before I could go anywhere I was struck by that bolt of lightning".

"What?!" TJ's friends interjected.

"But that's impossible" Gretchen stammered. "No human being can survive that amount of electrical shock, which means..."

"TJ's not human?" Mikey gasped

"It's the only explanation" Gretchen stated.

"OH THE INHUMANITY!" Mikey dramatically screamed up at the sky.

"Just let me finish!" TJ yelled. Silence. "I am human, but when the lightning struck, I merged with my cap. Now, everything that I am is encased in this cap. If I take it off I've got no soul or spirit because they're... I'm... trapped in the cap. Make sense?"

"But a human being cannot exist without it's spirit or soul in residence," Mikey pointed out. "Wouldn't you start to fade?"

"That's what you were seeing on the blacktop. It was the beginning stages of fading away. The seizure, my eyes doing that... thing, you know, and the glowing? If Lawson had kept the hat, my eyes would have shone brighter and brighter. They wouldn't have stopped getting brighter until they could have instantly blinded a person from a hundred yards away or closer. At that point, even if you had had the darkest pair of sunglasses on, you wouldn't have been able to see me. The light would have been too bright around me. The light would have faded after about ten seconds of maximum brightness and I'd have been gone without a trace. There would have been absolutely nothing left of me.

Gretchen was about to argue that this was scientifically impossible, but she realised that TJ quite literally lived this every day of his life, so if anyone knew this information for a fact, it'd be him, and whatever he said was most likely true.

"I still don't get it Teej," Spinelli said. "You've gone plenty of times without your hat. Why didn't you fade then?"

"That's because I've had this," Said TJ, pulling a necklace from his pocket and putting it on the picnic table. "Among other things". The necklace was made of what looked like an old shoelace, and hanging off of it was a small thin white piece of fabric.

"What's that?" asked Vince.

TJ put the necklace on before taking his cap off. He pointed to the inside where there was a square cut out of the thin white material that made up one of the flaps of inner lining. Yes some caps have flaps of inner lining. This is one of them.

"So the necklace can sustain you?" asked Gus.

"Only for a couple hours at a time". TJ said. "The shoelace is one of the things I was wearing when the lightning struck. so I have extra protection. My first baseball card was in my left pocket too, that can sustain me for a couple days at a time. They can recharge themselves when I'm not wearing them, but it takes the amount of time that I was using them for to recharge completely. The cap can keep me going as long as I live." TJ explained.

"You were wearing the necklace while you were principal for a day right?" Vince Questioned "when you were dressed up like Principal Prickly? You started to lose it man, what was up with that?"

TJ remembered that. He had been exhausted by the end of the day. "It had begun to wear off. School is six and a half hours long, and the necklace is only supposed to sustain me for five. When the necklace starts to get exhausted, the personality in it gets temporarily corrupted. I really had to fight it to act like my old self again near the end of the day. I was so tired from fighting that hard. I was barely awake by the time I got home. I think I ended up fainting in my doorway. The hat fell off when I did but I took my card from my backpack and put it in my left pocket before leaving school just in case something happened, so I was fine. I woke up the next morning in my bed. My mom had to carry me up to my room I was so out of it". TJ shuddered at the thought of his mother carrying him.

"What about the time you took over the playground's Mon-Sticker economy?" Gus inquired. "You went absolutely crazy!"

TJ smiled, remembering the absurd things he had done. "It was the card that got exhausted that time, I had to use it because Menlo traded my hat for five Mon-Stickers, and at the time it was and offer that I couldn't refuse. Especially because I knew I could buy it back the next day, so it wouldn't be too bad. I had also found this other maroon hat, but I think it gave me a another personality because it took a while for it to wear off even when I did get this old cap back. Anyway the next day came, but I wasn't able to buy the cap back because I had been working all that day, and the next day was the same. By the fourth day the card was nearly depleted. I didn't think to fight it that time. Menlo sold me my cap back that day. Even though I put it on immediately, something about the old maroon hat had hung on overnight and into the next day. As you can see it wore off though. Come to think of it, I still have that hat. I'll try to find it when I get home today".

"But what about that time you got into detention during recess for trying to get the good food from the cafeteria? You purposely took off the hat and left it on a lunch table!" Spinelli pointed out.

"Captivity does crazy things to the brain Spinelli," TJ said grimly. "Especially when it's during recess. I just wanted to get out, hat or no hat. Luckily I had the necklace on, so it was ok".

Just then a rustle was heard in the bushes. everyone turned to locate the source of the noise. Spinelli slowly approached the spot where the rustling had come from. She found the source. It was what everyone had been expecting.

"What did you hear!?" Spinelli screamed at Randall, picking him up by the back of his shirt.

"N-n-nothing.. I swear!" Randall stammered.

"Listen you little weasel" Spinelli shouted, "If you don't tell me exactly what you heard you'll regret it every time you look in a mirror, and look at your messed up face!"

"Spinelli!" TJ yelled "calm down, he knows now, there's nothing we can do about it".

"Oh I can do something about it" Spinelli said, bringing back her fist to knock Randall's memory right out of him.

"Spinelli don't!" TJ pleaded. "Even if he does blab, people will just think he's gone crazy anyway".

Spinelli knew this was true. Reluctantly she let go of Randall.

"MS. FINSTER! MS. FINSTER!" Randall screamed running back to the school.

Just then, the bell rung, signaling the end of recess.

"Your secret's safe with us man" said Vince assuringly. as the gang began to walk back to class.

"Yes it is. It's not going to be like when we conducted that experiment" Said Gretchen.

"Hopefully" said Gus.

TJ and Spinelli blushed.


	3. Freak Life

The second TJ opened the doors to enter the school building, the usual chaos that is the time period between recess and the next class disappeared. The running in the halls ceased, the gossip and general chatter diminished entirely, even the paper airplanes and paper wads seemed to stop and fall in mid air. The overwhelming craziness was replaced by an erie silence. Everyone had stopped what they were doing to stare at the boy wearing the red cap.

TJ observed the petrified hallway with dismay. 'It's really going to be that bad isn't it' TJ thought miserably. He would have given anything... except his cap, necklace, or baseball card, to be invisible at that instant. To be able to blend in with the floor and fade away. The gang could sense TJ beginning to tense up.

"What are you all looking at?" Spinelli yelled out at the crowd "move along".

With that, the hallway sprang back to life, the students walking into their classrooms without the slightest delay or protest. None of them dared disobey Spinelli. There wasn't a student at Third Street School who didn't know about Spinelli's good friend "Madame Fist". A few of them had even had the misfortune of meeting her. It was an introduction that they would never forget, and certainly one they didn't wish to repeat.

"My social status has dive-bombed down to freak" TJ stated glumly as he willed himself to walk down the hall.

"That's not true" lied Mikey in an attempt to cheer him up.

"Hey freak!" a boy called out as he threw a crumpled up piece of paper at TJ, who let it score a direct hit to his cheek. The rest of the gang gasped and Spinelli shot an angry glance at the boy, who quickly picked up his books and fled.

"It isn't true huh?" TJ muttered, watching his untied shoelaces swing back and forth with every drag of his shoes.

"It can't be like this everywhere" assured Gretchen, "Ms. Grotke would never allow this type of behavior in class". TJ opened the door to his classroom, readying himself for what was waiting for him.

"...he is your fellow student after all and I expect you to treat him as such" Ms. Grotke was telling the class. "even after his little... episode at rece- Oh!" She said, noticing TJ's arrival. TJ closed his eyes in preparation for what he knew was to come. It came. A cascade of spitballs bombarded him. Like the paper wad earlier, he let them all hit their target.

"Class!" Ms. Grotke gasped.

"It's ok Ms. Grotke" choked TJ through the lump in his throat, trying as hard as he could not to burst into tears. The rest of the gang entered the classroom and took their designated seats, but TJ lingered in the doorway. Vince could recognise the guilty look in his eyes. It meant he was about to pull something. And he knew exactly what.

"TJ don't!..." Vince began, but he was too late. TJ turned and fled down the hallway, his sobs echoing off the walls. The gang immediately sprang back out of their seats and made for the door.

"Please excuse us Ms. Grotke" Gretchen said as she closed the door behind her, not giving the overwhelmed teacher the chance to respond.

TJ couldn't stop his tears from rolling out of his eyes and splattering onto the floor tiles as he ran down the desolate hallway, his sobs catching the attention of the classrooms he passed. From a somewhere behind him, TJ could hear the sound of his friends, pleading for him to stop running . He tried to block the imploring voices from his conciousness. He didn't want to stop, nor was he going to. He wanted to get out of here. He wanted to go home where he was fortified from the paper wads, the spitballs, the name-calling, and the pointless attempts to cheer him up. He wanted to hide under the warm soft comforter on his bed where he could be alone with only his thoughts to keep him company. TJ flew through the school's front doors and tore down the cement pathway that led to Third Street, where he took a right. He was running so fast he had to keep a hand on his head to prevent his cap from flipping off, even though that barely happened when it was worn backwards. He was also running fast enough that not even Vince could catch up to him.

"How is he running so fast?" Vince thought out loud.

"It the drive of his negative emotions" explained Gretchen. "They're shifting him into overdrive you might say". Maximum overdrive. TJ hadn't been running for two minutes and he had reached his house already. He bolted across his lawn and burst through his front door.

Mrs. Detweiler was washing up the dishes from her lunch at the kitchen sink. Everything was peaceful. That was of course, before her front door was suddenly forced open without warning. In her surprise she dropped the plate she was washing. It shattered in the basin. She turned around to identify the source of the noise to find her door was wide open and there was a pair of sneakers running up her stairs. She assumed she was being robbed and was about to pick up the phone to call 911 when she realised that she recognised the sobs coming from upstairs.

"TJ!" She gasped as she followed her son upstairs. She reached the second level just in time to see her son's bedroom door slam closed with a resounding BANG that she could swear nearly deafened her. She could hear the sound of more footsteps thundering up her staircase. "My goodness!" Mrs. Detweiler exclaimed "aren't you all supposed to be in school?"

"We are Mrs. Detweiler, but we need to talk to TJ more than we need to be in class" Mikey wheezed. He hadn't had that much physical activity since the kindergarten derby five years ago.

There was a clicking noise and six pairs of eyes turned and looked at the doorknob to TJ's room, which had just been locked.

"Well I'm afraid that's going to have to wait until later" said Mrs. Detweiler. The sound of something heavy being dragged across carpet could be heard. "Honey," said the concerned mother "I really hope you're not barricading your door again".

"Just leave me alone!" TJ could be heard screaming through the wall.

"I think it's best we let him be for a while" she decided as she and five panting children climbed down the stairs. "I'll call the school to see if I can pardon him for the rest of the day. Try coming back after school, he may be in a more... stable mood then. Oh, and when you do, can some one please bring his backpack and homework with them, I can't have him falling more behind than he already is."

A loud scream of "MOM!" Could be heard through the ceiling. TJ had heard that he wasn't escaping his homework.

"Now you kids hurry back to class now, I'll see you in a few hours." said Mrs. Detweiler, getting a paper bag from the closet to put the remains of her plate in before dropping it in the garbage pail.

As he walked with the rest of the gang, Gus looked back to see if he could catch a glimpse of his friend through his bedroom window. He wouldn't have been able to even if he was standing directly outside of it. Blocking out every little bit of light coming in from the window, was a thick wall of Señor Fusion comic books.

The architect of this thick wall was curled up under his comforter, taking in the silent darkness with relief. TJ was loving every second of his solitude. Normally it would start to drive him crazy, but now the isolation felt alright, soothing even. Without the stimuli of the world, he could finally begin to calm down. In his head, TJ began to review the things that had happened to him today.

He had woken up late to begin with, which wasn't a very good start. He was able to take a brief shower (which somehow managed to turn freezing cold halfway through), but didn't have time to eat breakfast. Walking to school he tripped on his shoelace that he left untied and fell on the sidewalk, resulting in a large bump on the left side of his forehead, which had only just stopped throbbing. He had received his third tardy of the week. His old "justin time for class" knock knock joke had already been used, and he couldn't think of anything else at the time. He had pinched his finger in his desk and let out a quick yelp of pain, making everyone jump sky high and glare at him, and also, he had received an F on his test from yesterday. The one he had studied all night for. Then came recess. The time of day when he thought he could hang out with his friends and have fun. But Lawson had to spoil that. He followed them everywhere they went and fired insult after insult at all of them. TJ's last straw was when he called Mikey "fatty". TJ had challenged him to a game of kickball and made the... the deal. The deal that he had made because he wanted to keep Lawson from hurting him and his friends. The deal that came around and hit him on the cheek, and then some. He had let down his friends, and he had lost that kickball game. To Lawson of all people. Now the whole school has seen his secret, and because of it they now all treated him like a freak. Even Ms. Grotke.

He hated the feeling it all gave him. It made him feel so cold and alone, so empty on the inside it hurt. He just felt so... unloved. Maybe he was just being paranoid, but it was how he felt. Although his friends still hadn't given up on him despite knowing his secret, somehow it just wasn't enough. His parents had always known, since the very beginning, still, that wasn't enough either.

Then something came to him. 'If it isn't enough, why am I shutting it out?' he thought, 'Why am I rejecting the thing I know I need the most? In fact, why not let something in?'. TJ lifted the comforter off of himself and checked the time. It was three thirty four according to the digital clock on his bedside table. His friends would be coming back any minute now. That was what he needed, not to be alone with his thoughts. He needed the five people he knew would always be there for him through thin and through thick, he couldn't push them away! Nor could he push the world away. There were plenty of small pleasures to enjoy in life!

"TJ!" His mother shouted up the stairs, "I made you a snack!" TJ smiled. Small pleasures indeed, and he could use a snack just about now.

"I'll be right down!" He called through the wall "but I have to do something first!". TJ looked around his room and found his window. He could see the light around the edges where there was light trying to peek through. He tore down his wall of Señor Fusion comics, which came crashing to the ground, the impact jumbling the books up pretty roughly, even creating tears in some of the pages, but TJ didn't care. He threw up the window sash and stuck his head out the window and took a deep breath of the outside air to clear his mind. The afternoon sun beat down on him, replacing the icy coldness he had felt earlier with a golden warmth. TJ smiled, chuckled even as the breeze swept over him and tickled his face. It felt wonderful in every way, but he still had one more thing to do. Reluctantly, TJ pulled himself back into his now brightly lit room, leaving the window open, and not even bothering to step over his treasured comics, he ran to his bedroom door and pushed his barricade away from it. He opened it up and allowed the scent to fill every corner of his nostrils as he took in a deep breath. "Nachos!" He grinned in delight. He ran down the stairs and turned the corner into the kitchen, where an enormous dish heaped with golden tortilla chips, covered with melted cheese, sour cream, salsa, and jalapeño peppers (all the things TJ liked on his nachos), sizzled on the table, waiting for him. Just then, there was a knock on the door. "I got it!" Said TJ, walking over to the door with a new spring in his step.

Five children were standing on the other side of the door, waiting for their knock to be answered. They had felt reluctant to leave their friend in the state he was. They expected him to be the same way he had been when they had forced themselves against their own will back to class. Up in his room with the door locked and barricaded, still refusing to come out and screaming to be left alone. It was to their great surprise that when the door opened, it was TJ standing there with a broad grin spread across his face.

"Just in time, guys!" TJ said to his bewildered friends. "Come on in, I can't possibly eat all of these myself!"


	4. Small Pleasures

"Way to skimp on the refried beans Teej" Mikey said through the tortilla chip in his mouth.

"You actually like those?" TJ asked pulling a disgusted face as he solved the first problem on his math homework.

"How can you not?" Replied Mikey with a shocked expression.

The gang was gathered around the small kitchen table picking at the mountain of tortilla chips in front of them. These were especially good seeing as the majority of the ingredients were fresh from the farm stand a small ways out of town. TJ took another piece of heaven from the pile and shoved the whole thing in his mouth.

"You guys are barely touching the jalapeños!" Spinelli smiled. "What's the matter? Can't handle a little punch?" she said, scooping up five pieces of pepper on one chip and shoving it into her mouth, the others wincing as she did so.

"I swear Spinelli, one day you're gonna do that and you're gonna burn your mouth!" Gus warned. "You can blind yourself from doing that you know!"

"Well one day isn't today safety man!" said Spinelli, immensely enjoying the fireworks going off in her mouth. She crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. Gus raised his eyebrows at this, but decided to let it go.

As much as TJ wanted to just relax, eat nachos, and chat with his friends (and get this dang homework finished), he knew he had to discuss his thoughts from earlier today, and a thought that had only recently began to form. "So" he began, trying to figure out how to say what he needed to. "About earlier today, I'm sorry for just bolting like that"

"Bolting?" laughed Vince "that was more than bolting, speedy".

TJ managed a smile. "I don't know what came over me, it was just this overwhelming feeling of just...greif and, I just wanted to get away from it all, and I couldn't ever get there fast enough. I just felt so..."

"Unloved?" asked Mikey.

"Yeah" sighed TJ. "Unloved. I just couldn't handle it, and I let it take over me" he explained. "I wanted to block the world out, and I guess by barricading my door and blocking up my window I kind of did that. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I kinda liked the feeling of being alone up there for a while, I felt... safe I guess. Like no one could do anything to hurt me in the place I was".

"And how'd you get over all of that so quickly?" Inquired Spinelli. "I mean we left and you were a wreck! We come back less than two hours later and you're fine!".

TJ smiled and ate another nacho. "After I began to calm down, I began to think straight, and that's when it hit me, I couldn't keep pushing you guys away like I've been doing. That I was going to need you guys to help me through all of this."

"You can count on us TJ" Gretchen assured her friend.

"Yeah, any time you feel like that, just call and we'll be there for you" Gus smiled. The others nodded in agreement.

TJ was touched "Thanks guys. You know, I don't know where I'd be without five great friends like the bunch of you".

"I don't know where we'd be without you TJ!" said Gus.

"Aw c'mon guys,"

"Seriously Teej" said Spinelli. "We'd have nowhere to go without you. We're all from different worlds. I'm into boxing and wrestling, Gretchen's a smartie, Vince is Mr. Athletic, Mikey's into poetry, Gus is a safety man, and you bring us all together TJ. We've become inseparable now, but if you had never been there, we wouldn't have ever made the friends of a lifetime. You made it all happen Teej!"

TJ was pretty sure he was blushing right now, and he was right. Very right.

"Um, TJ I think the jalapeños are getting to you" Gus told him.

"Huh?" TJ asked.

"Gus, he's only experiencing some minor idiopathic craniofacial erythema" Gretchen told him.

"Basic English please Gretch" Gus laughed.

Gretchen rolled her eyes jokingly "He's only blushing"

"I don't blush!" contradicted TJ.

"Tell that to the mirror!" Laughed Spinelli.

Mikey smiled "It's a sign of his affection for us" he informed the others. "It's lovely what a simple blush can tell you isn't it?"

"I don't blush!" TJ repeated laughing.

"Go see for yourself" smiled Vince.

Humoring his friends, TJ got up to go look at himself in the nearest mirror, which was in the bathroom. He went inside and looked in the mirror over the sink. TJ swore it looked like the worst sunburn anyone could ever get. He was blushing alright. His whole face was bright red. TJ got most of the blush to go away before walking back to his friends.

Spinelli chuckled as TJ came back from the bathroom. "You don't blush huh?".

"Oh, shut up".

For a while the room was quite silent, apart from the crunching of nachos. That is until Becky had come downstairs after finishing her homework.

"Oh, nachos!" she had said with excitement reaching over the table to grab one.

TJ had knocked her hand away saying "No big sisters to this dish Becky".

""Mom! TJ's being a little jerk again!"

At one point TJ and Spinelli had competed against each other to see who could handle the largest amount of peppers at once, much to Gus's dismay, and Spinelli's delight. She had won of course. TJ could only manage six peppers before running to the sink for water, coughing and spluttering. Spinelli had gotten up to seven and still felt it was nothing. She put eleven peppers on a tortilla chip and bit. She froze, her eyes widened and she ran to the sink jumping up and down. Gus had only sighed shook his head. He had warned her, but no one listens to boring old safety man. The whole table erupted with laughter as she returned red faced and wide eyed.

"Those things are fresh!" She gasped.

TJ laughed. "They were just picked earlier today". TJ drank down the rest of his water in an attempt to get the wretched burning in his mouth to cease, like all his previous attempts, it didn't work. He sighed. He wanted so badly to ask the group something, but he didn't know if they'd take him seriously. It was a pretty weird question. He decided to go for it and was willing to get a couple laughs. "Guys, I know it sounds weird, but do you think I should tell Ms. Grotke about my whole cap thing? TJ was taken by surprise when no one laughed. They all took it completely seriously, and were thinking right now, he could tell by their somewhat vacant expressions.

"She does seem like the kind of person who would believe you TJ, with her knowledge of spirit" Mikey pointed out. "She might even be able to help you".

"I have to agree with Mikey on that note" Gretchen said. "She may have information about the spiritual bond to inanimate objects, and that would prove quite useful to you".

"So you think I should try it?" Asked TJ.

"It's worth a try Teej" shrugged Spinelli.

"Alright, I'll do it tomorrow during recess" said TJ.

The others gasped.

"And sacrifice your only recreational time period of the school day?" Gretchen asked in shock over TJ's plans.

"I think I prefer being with Ms. Grotke for recess more than around a bunch of other kids that are just going to torment me everywhere I go" TJ pointed out.

"Good point" sighed Vince.

The mountain of nachos was slowly starting to disappear as the gang continued to consume them. Once again the room fell silent. Everyone was enjoying their snack too much to stop and talk. TJ didn't mind though. He was eating one of his favorite snacks, surrounded by the best friends a kid could ever ask for. If only he didn't have this much homework to do, the moment would be perfect. He continued to solve the math problems on the sheet beside him. He only had three problems left before he could move onto his vocabulary word sentences. Those were easy. The math wasn't all that hard either, but at least with his sentences he could be creative.

"Having trouble with the math?" Gretchen asked, ready to help him.

"Doing it, no." TJ replied "enjoying it, yes".

"Ok"

TJ was on his last problem and was working halfway through it when he figured out what the answer would eventually reveal itself to be. He finished the work just to be sure. His assumption had been correct. He smiled. The answer to the last or "ultimate" problem had been 42, making 42 the ultimate answer. He loved it when things in life had to do with his favorite stories.

"I thought you said you were having trouble with enjoying your math." said Gretchen, noticing the smile on TJ's face.

"I liked the last problem" he replied handing her the sheet. Gretchen looked over the paper and raised her eyebrows at the final problem.

"I didn't know Ms. Grotke was a fan of Douglas Adams!" She said handing the paper back to TJ, who stuffed it into his backpack. "It could be a big coincidence, but that doesn't seem likely".

TJ added this to his mental list of small pleasures for the day. The day was turning around quite drastically. It had transformed from the worst day of his life, into a day to love it. TJ pulled out a sheet of note paper and began to write down his sentences, knowing his vocab words and their definitions by heart already. He got so lost in his imagination and his sentences that he forgot about the nachos, which were nearly gone now. TJ wrote the last period of his paper and reviewed his work with pride. Each sentence gave a unique and creative example of a way to use the words, and the context gave a pretty good idea of their definitions. He put his work in his backpack and reached into the dish for another nacho, and to his surprise his hand wasn't met with a warm golden corn chip, but with the cold remains of their toppings. The rest of the gang giggled as their friend's hand dived into the contents of the dish. TJ lifted his fingers from the thick substance in the dish, allowing some of it to slip off and plop back into the dish. He grimaced. Wonderful.

"Alright, who ate the last nacho?" He asked, licking the mixture of cheese, sour cream and salsa off of his fingers. Five hands pointed to the woman who was entering the room. "Mom!" TJ whined smiling.

"What?" Replied his mother "I cooked those up for you, I should at least get one!".

"I'm the one who had the crumby day," He chuckled. "And speaking of crumbs" noticing the mess on the table "I'm not cleaning those up". Five children looked at TJ's mother expectantly. She crossed her arms.

"Well neither am I". So TJ turned to look at Becky instead. It was her who eventually gave in.

"Alright, fine I'll do it" she moaned. "This is _so _unfair".


	5. Useful Information

Beep beep beep! TJ opened his eyes and groaned. He was in no way a morning person. Especially on a school day. He reached a drowsy hand over to his bedside table and fumbled around for the reset button. He found it and slammed his fingers down on it, stopping the obnoxious alarm from continuing it's irritating tone. TJ sat up and rubbed his foggy eyes. He was still tired. He had stayed up all night re-shelving each and every one of his Señor Fusion comic books in order, and was now regretting his choice.

It was raining outside. TJ could hear the pitter patter of the raindrops on the roof and the trickle as they slid down the shingles and dropped to the ground far below. At the thought of trickling water, he realised he had to go. Bad.

With an energy he didn't even know he had at that time of day, TJ threw off his comforter and sprang out of bed, running to the bathroom at the opposite side of his room. He didn't bother to close the door as he rushed into the small room to relieve himself. He had only just made it. Of course his mother _had _to choose that time to come into his room with a clean basket of laundry.

"ARGH!" TJ yelled as he realised his mother was in his room. The toilet was too far from the door for him to reach. Panicking he quickly pulled down his night shirt to cover himself. The yell from TJ made Mrs. Detweiler jump and nearly made her drop the basket. She turned to see her son stretching his pajama top down far enough to cover his knees.

"Oh please TJ, I'm your mother" she laughed.

"MOM!"

"Alright, alright I'll close the door" said Mrs. Detweiler, doing as she said she would and rolling her eyes. Her son could be very over dramatic at times. She went back to her task of putting TJ's clean clothes in the appropriate drawers.

TJ lifted his shirt up and continued his business. He sighed. He didn't understand why his mother always caught him at the worst possible time. Was it in her genes or something? He guessed it probably was as he flushed, pulled his pants up, and walked over to the sink to wash his hands.

TJ looked at the clock hanging on the wall above the bathroom door. He calculated that he had enough time for a ten minute shower before he needed to be in the kitchen eating breakfast. He took his necklace and put it on, taking his baseball card out of his left pajama pants pocket and putting it on the counter next to the sink. The necklace was the only thing he could afford to get wet out of his three things. After doing this, he continued his morning routine.

Ten minutes later, TJ stepped out of the bathroom with his towel around his waist, covering everything below. He realised his mother had left his bedroom door open and gasped. He ran over to the door, quickly closing it and turning the lock, enabling him to dress himself without the fear of intrusion. This morning was really starting to whomp.

Emerging from his room fully clothed, TJ walked down his hallway and thumped down the stairs, taking a right at the bottom and walking into the kitchen where his sister Becky was finishing up her toast and reading through her seven page report, checking for any mistakes she hadn't caught the last time she proofread her work. TJ smiled and rolled his eyes at his sister's over achievement. He didn't understand why she did so much extra work when all she had to do was write down the front of a page and be finished.

The still somewhat drowsy boy walked over to his spot at the table where a bowl, spoon, glass of milk, and a box of his favorite cereal had been left for him. He sat down and poured his chocolate frosted cereal into the bowl. He shook some extra sugar on top and poured in the milk. He shoveled the spheres of oat chocolate and sugar... and extra sugar, onto his spoon and into his mouth. Becky grimaced as TJ crunched on his breakfast.

"You've been eating the same cereal for breakfast every morning since preschool and it still grosses me out" she said in disgust.

TJ smiled at her as he continued crunching, and slowly added two more shakes of sugar to the contents of his bowl, loving every second of his sister's reaction. She should see the look on her face! Becky couldn't take any more and redirected her attention to her paper again, trying to rid her mind of the disgusting sight she had just witnessed.

TJ heard the sound of his father coming down the stairs. He looked up just in time to see him kiss his mother and turned away in disgust. He didn't think he'd ever understand that mushy love junk. Becky was now looking at TJ thinking 'he should see the look on his face!'. TJ noticed his sister looking at him and looked up from his cereal.

"What are you lookin at?"

"Your face"

TJ opened his mouth and chewed as loudly as possible. Becky cringed and lifted her report to cover her disgusting little brother. TJ smiled. Job well done. He finished up his cereal, put his bowl in the sink for his mother to wash later and got his school stuff together. Becky did the same. She put her report in her backpack and stood up. Pushing in her chair, she walked to the door and opened it shouting "Bye mom, bye T-Jerk" as she did nearly every morning. She walked out the door, closing it behind her.

TJ was still getting his shoes on when Becky closed the door. She could have left it open for him, but thats what older sisters do right? They make life miserable. He stood up and re-opened the front door as he called over his shoulder like his sister had just done.

"See ya mom!".

"Have a good day at school TJ!"

TJ walked across his lawn and turned left down third street. He could see Spinelli waiting for him not too far down the road.

"Morning Teej!" He heard her yell. He continued walking and waved at her as he saw her walk over to him. "So, feeling better?" She asked.

"I don't know" TJ replied. "I mean, I don't know how school's going to be today. I hope it's not going to be like yesterday, but you never know" he said looking down at the sidewalk in front of him.

"Oh cheer up TJ" smiled Spinelli, "As long as I'm next to you no one will dare to do anything.

"They'll still look at me weird and think of me as a freak"

"Well then they don't know who TJ Detweiler is now do they? You know that you're not a freak and that it's just what happens to your physical body when you take off the hat! You've got no control over what happens because you're not, in you... I just made it sound worse didn't I? Well when you tell Ms. Grotke today I'm sure she'll understand".

TJ stopped dead in his tracks. He looked up eyes wide, a rush of nerves washed over him

Spinelli looked back at him and stopped as well. "You ok Teej?" She asked concerned.

"Yeah I'm fine. I just forgot that I was going to tell her today" replied TJ, shaking off his fears as he began to walk again.

"You sound like you don't want to do it" said Spinelli looking over at her friend, who just continued to watch the sidewalk.

"Well it's not really the easiest thing to believe Spinelli, I was surprised that you and the rest of the gang took it as well as you did".

"C'mon Teej, this is Ms. Grotke we're talking about here. She's into this kind of stuff. She probably knows exactly what it is that you're going through, and a whole lot of things you didn't know along with it".

"If you say so Spinelli".

"I know so".

TJ and Spinelli turned left again and into the schoolyard, where they walked up the cement pathway. TJ was surprised by the fact that he wasn't getting that many awkward looks. He still got them of course, but there weren't as many of them as he had expected. He was starting to let himself relax when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He jumped in surprise and turned around to see a tall figure standing in front of him. Upon realising who it was he gasped.

"Ms. Finster! I didn't do anything, I just got here, honest!"

"Relax Mr. Detweiler that's not why I'm here" said Ms. Finster in her usual raspy voice.

"Wha..?"

"I just wanted to make sure you were feeling alright today. We don't need what happened yesterday to happen again".

"Oh, no Ms. Finster I'm fine".

"Good. Now, hurry up and get to class before the bell rings and I have to give you detention" said Ms. Finster walking away.

Spinelli blinked a couple times. "What just happened?"

"I have no idea".

Class was just as boring as it had always been, but TJ actually didn't mind it much. That was only because of what he had planned to do during recess. He almost didn't want to do it. He was certain that Ms. Grotke would only laugh at him, and if she did believe it, what would she do? Would she call him a freak too? Would she run away screaming like Lawson had done? There was no way to tell and that's what was bothering him. He just hoped it would be something that wouldn't make him feel any worse than he already did.

The recess bell eventually rang and the class stood up and left their desks to go to recess. The rest of the gang gave TJ a look as if to say 'good luck' as they followed the others. TJ just stayed in his seat and took a deep breath. Ms. Grotke had noticed that one of her students wasn't so eager to leave class.

"What's the matter TJ?" The puzzled teacher asked, "aren't you going to go out to recess and play with the other children?"

TJ sighed. "Actually Ms. Grotke, there's something I'd like to talk to you about this recess" he said, getting up and walking over to Ms. Grotke's desk.

"Oh? What is it? The other kids aren't harassing you again are they?" Asked Ms. Grotke.

"No they're fine, it's about why they were making fun of me. You saw what happened to me on the stairs at recess yesterday right?" Ms. Grotke nodded. TJ sighed again. "I'm going to need you to let me say everything before you call me insane ok?" Ms. Grotke nodded again, this time with a look of puzzlement and concern on her face. "When I was in kindergarten, I got struck by lightning and..."

"YOU WHAT?" Yelled Ms. Grotke, jumping out of het seat, and then seeing the look on TJ's face, sat down again and put herself back in order. "I'm sorry TJ, please continue".

TJ took another deep breath and once again began to speak. "When the lightning struck I think my soul got sucked up into my cap, because when I take it off, what you were seeing, that happens". Ms. Grotke gasped and jumped out of her seat again, but this time, it was because she knew something. She rushed over to the cabinets at the right side of the room under the giant window, and took something out of it. TJ could see that the object she removed from the cabinet was a very old and extremely large dusty book. It was also pretty thick. She hurriedly brushed it off, ran back to her desk with it and opened it to a page somewhere in the middle of the book. "What's this?" asked TJ.

"It's an old book my mother gave me. Eureka!" She said, finding what she was looking for. "The spiritual bonding to inanimate objects" she read aloud. Ms. Grotke moved her finger slowly down the page, signifying that she was reading. TJ watched in amazement at how fast she could read, taking her only about ten seconds to run down each enormous page with her finger. He waited for her to finish the chapter which only took her about two minutes as the chapter was eleven pages. She looked up at TJ with a look of astonishment on her face.

"My goodness TJ!" She exclaimed.

"What?" He asked smiling, knowing that she knew exactly what he was going through.

"It says here that if a spirit is strong enough, when it's physical body is a situation where death is inevitable, it will migrate into an inanimate object that it has an emotional connection with to keep itself intact".

"Like my cap?" Asked TJ, overjoyed at the fact that he was finally truly understanding what had happened to him all those years ago.

"Yes, like your hat" she said nodding. "It also says that when the spirit saves itself it often leaves physical body intact, showing no signs of damage or trauma of any kind, allowing the person to continue on with their lives as long as they remain in contact with the object. If they don't, they go though a process called fading. It then describes this process. You were starting to fade TJ!"

"I know" said TJ grimly.

"But I don't understand! You don't always wear your hat, so how are you still here?" TJ smiled and pulled his baseball card and necklace out of his left pocket. He placed them on her desk. "Oh!" She said, wondering why her student had placed these random items on her desk.

TJ knew he'd have to explain these objects to Ms. Grotke. "I had this baseball card in my left pocket when I was struck by the lighting and the necklace is made from the shoelace I was wearing and the inner lining of my cap" he told her.

"Oh!" She smiled. "So there are three things you use".

"Yeah, but the necklace and card can only sustain me for so long".

"You had an emotional connection with your shoelace?".

"No" answered TJ, "I just thought it'd be a nice touch to use my old shoelace" he said giggling.

"It really is" agreed Ms. Grotke.

"Does the book say how I can get back to normal?" Asked TJ curiously.

"It does, but I'm afraid the only way for that to happen is for what caused the spiritual migration in the first place, to occur again".

"Oh" said TJ gritting his teeth. He didn't fancy getting struck by lightning again.

"Do you mind if I share this with the rest of the faculty?" She asked. "It might be best that they understand your bond". TJ was about to say no, but then he thought about it for a bit. The faculty understanding him? That'd actually be quite nice.

"If you think they won't call you crazy, go ahead" he smiled.

The teacher and her student looked at the clock as the school bell rang again, signaling the end of recess.

"Well!" said Ms. Grotke smiling, "I guess it's time for lunch. I'm sorry that took up your whole recess TJ" she said closing her book getting up from her chair, and walking over to the door.

"Are you kidding me?" Said TJ grinning broadly, "that was the best recess I've had in a long time. Thanks Ms. Grotke, for everything" he said as he went out the door Ms. Grotke was holding open for him, and walked next to his teacher down the hall toward the cafeteria.

"Any time TJ," said Ms. Grotke. "You know, your spirit is incredibly strong!"

"Ms. Grotke, please" TJ said, smiling at what he thought was only a compliment.

"I'm serious!" Said Ms. Grotke. "It says in the book that a spirit normally doesn't become strong enough to migrate until the age of twenty seven!"

"Really?" Gasped TJ in surprise.

"Yes, and just think! You were only in kindergarten when you were struck and your spirit was strong enough to migrate then. It's been four years! Think about how strong it must be now!"

"Wow!" TJ breathed as he arrived at the cafeteria door. He opened it and held it for Ms. Grotke, who shook her head.

"Oh no TJ, the teachers don't eat in the cafeteria," she said. "but enjoy your lunch. I heard the lunch ladies are serving pizza today!" said the teacher as she continued to walk down the hall.

TJ grinned as he turned and walked into the cafeteria. He now understood so much more about himself than he did before he went to school that morning. He never thought he'd think this, but he was actually glad he came to school.

After getting his pizza, TJ walked over to the table where his friends were all sitting, waiting for him to join them. He sat down next to them, took off his hat and held it in his hands, which was safe because he had his baseball card in his left pocket. "So I owe my life to you" he whispered, turning the treasured red baseball cap in his hands. He gently placed it back on his head, and turned it backwards.

"So, what'd Ms. Grotke tell you about your cap?" asked Spinelli.

TJ smiled in complete happiness and told her, " A lot of useful information".


	6. Taken

TJ was immensely enjoying his afternoon. No one was really bothering him at all. He wasn't getting that many strange looks that he could see, and there weren't any people launching paper wads or spitballs at him. It felt wonderful just to have things fall back in order again. Well, somewhat at least. Ms. Finster was actually beginning to stand up for him when people picked on him. She was treating him... nicely, which was shocking, and not to mention a little disturbing, but still nice in it's own weird little way. He wouldn't be able to change his social status, but that didn't matter all that much. Not anymore. TJ was entirely content in just understanding himself. He couldn't get over the fact that technically, he should be dead right now. Long dead, buried deep in a grave in some forlorn cemetary. And he owed five years of life, and counting, to his signature red baseball cap. The small fact that no one was picking on him was a bonus. Yes, some people were still looking at him strangely, but that was ok with him now. He felt so wonderful that he was grinning slightly all through the rest of school, which startled a number of other students.

TJ's friends had noticed this, and couldn't help but smile a little themselves. The good ole' TJ they knew and loved was back, and he was happier than ever. They didn't know why exactly, but they didn't care.

At the end of the school day, TJ waved goodbye to his friends. All except for Spinelli of course, who walked the same route home as him. Spinelli and TJ strolled slowly down third street as they chatted happily in the peak of the afternoon.

"So," Spinelli said looking over at TJ, "you really never answered my question from lunch today. What did Ms. Grotke tell you at recess?"

TJ smiled broadly at the thought of recess that day. He began to recall the things Ms. Grotke had told him. "Basically, she said that my spirit migrated to my cap when I got struck by the lightning, and that without that happening, I'd be dead right now".

"Yikes!".

"I know right?" TJ said excitedly. "My spirit is really strong too. Ms. Grotke said that spirits don't normally get strong enough to migrate until they're twenty seven years old!"

"Get out!" Spinelli said her jaw dropping in shock.

"No, I'm serious!" TJ smiled looking across at her.

"Well Teej, I'm glad you're feeling good about this whole thing now" Spinelli said.

"Me too Spinelli" grinned TJ, "me too".

There was still so much TJ wanted to tell Spinelli, but he knew that her house was the next house on the right, so he didn't have much time to talk to her. "Uh, Spinelli, d'you wanna come over to my place after you finish your homework? I'll call the others too. I wanna talk to all of you about what Ms. Grotke said today".

"Sure!" Spinelli said cheerily. "See ya then Teej!"

"Alright, se ya!" TJ hollered, waving to his friend as she left his side and walked down her driveway toward her front door. He sighed. He knew that everyone had loads of homework to do tonight, so he was pretty sure no one... apart from Gretchen, would show up until at least dinner. He also had to call the rest of his friends and ask if they even could come over. Spinelli could, he knew that, but he didn't know about everyone else. He could only hope for everyone to be available.

TJ could see his house now. It wasn't all that far down the road, which was a huge relief. He didn't think that he could carry his bulging backpack any further. He picked up his pace, feeling the straps to his book bag beginning to fit him looser and looser as it's content's weight pulled more of their length through the adjusting pieces, eventually resulting in him having to take off his backpack, and re-adjust the straps. Like he did every day, he walked across his lawn and up to his front door.

TJ stepped inside his house and closed the door behind him. Not even bothering to step away from the door, he let his backpack slide down off of his back. Big mistake. TJ winced and let out a quick yelp of pain as the backpack straps scraped down the sides of his arms, leaving a burning sensation behind. He gritted his teeth as he felt the pain begin to subside. After a moment, TJ picked up his backpack again, and heaved it into the kitchen where he plopped it down and and took the stuff he needed from it. His notebook, math textbook, a pencil, and an eraser. TJ sat down at the kitchen table across from his sister, who had already completed her homework and was reading her romance novel. TJ grimaced. Those kind of books disturbed him on a number of levels. To think of the things his sister was reading... 'don't' he thought to himself 'just, don't'.

"What was the shout about?" asked Becky, not looking up from her book.

"Backpack straps burned me when I let them slide down my arms" TJ replied flatly.

"Ouch" said Becky unenthusiastically.

"Where's Mom?"

"She went out to run some errands. She'll be back soon".

"Ok".

TJ slid his textbook in front of him and opened it to the assigned page. Once he found it and realised what the subject was, he groaned and let his head fall back. Another big mistake. The back of TJ's head hit the back of the chair. Hard. The noise was loud enough to make Becky look up from her book and wince. TJ threw himself forward and rubbed where it hurt, gasping in pain.

"Long division again?" Guessed Becky.

"Uh huh" grunted TJ through gritted teeth, trying to ignore the pain coming from the back of his head. "How'd you know?"

"You always do something stupid when you get long division homework".

"Oh, shut up." Said TJ picking up his pencil and getting to work.

Becky rolled her eyes and once again returned her gaze to the book she was reading.

It was 4:37 now, and TJ had finished his math. He wasn't bad at math, in fact he was actually quite good at it, it just wasn't fun to him. Before moving on to the next of his five textbooks, TJ decided to call his other friends. He knew if he didn't now, he probably wouldn't get the chance. He quickly dialed in Vince's number from memory and brought the old giant phone to his ear. It wasn't even a cordless, but every time he would try to persuade his parents to get a cordless phone they would only explain how "This phone works just fine, so we have no need for a new one". He knew all of his friends had cordless phones, he didn't understand why he couldn't have one. He hoped he'd at least be the first to get a phone with caller ID. Just like cordless, it was nothing new, (which made him even more desperate to get a new phone), but still cool none the less. TJ listened to the annoying drone of the dial tone as he waited for someone to pick up. Eventually, someone did.

"Hello?" TJ heard Vince's voice crackle through the speaker on the phone.

"Hey, Vince! It's me, TJ".

"Oh hey Teej, how's it hangin'?"

"Not so tender Vince, I still got a bunch of homework I gotta get through, but I was wondering if you could come over to my place after you finish. I'm calling the rest of the gang too".

"Hang on a second, hey Mom! Can I go hang out with TJ after I finish my homework? She says yeah, I'll be there Teej!".

"Great! See ya then Vince!"

"See ya!"

With that, TJ hung up the phone and began dialing Gretchen's number, which he also knew from memory.

"Why are you always so loud on the phone?" asked Becky in an annoyed tone.

"Oh, and you're not?" responded TJ.

"Not as loud as you".

TJ raised his eyebrows at his sister's response. "Yeah, right". He heard the phone being picked up on the other end of the line.

"Hello TJ" said Gretchen's voice.

"Hiya Gretch," TJ greeted puzzled "how'd you know it was me?"

"My parents recently replaced our phone, which mysteriously stopped working. It came equiped with a caller identification system, so it's easy to tell who's calling. It talks too".

"Tender!" TJ exclaimed, trying, keep the disappointment out of his voice.

"Indeed it is TJ, what did you want to talk about?"

"I was wondering if you could come over to my place after you finish your homework. I wanna talk to everyone about what Ms. Grotke told me during recess today".

"Well TJ, I have completed my homework and I'd love to come over now, but unfortunately, I have a few chores to do before I'm available, and I doubt you're finished with your intense load of homework".

"Not even close Gretchen. But I will be soon".

"Ok TJ, I look forward to seeing you".

"You too Gretch, bye!"

"Bye".

'Dang it!' Thought TJ as he he hung up, took the phone off the hook again, and began dialing Mikey's number. 'She beat me to it. Now I feel really out of date'.

It was getting late. It was 6:42, and TJ was beginning to fear that his friends wouldn't show. The sun was just beginning to hang low in the sky and it felt like it was threatening to drop below the horizon any minute now. TJ was kneeling at his open bedroom window. He had been exhausted from all the brain power he had drained himself of from doing his homework, so he had gone up to his room to relax. TJ had opened his window, and plopped down on his windowsill, not caring how he landed, and he hadn't moved since. He was in somewhat of an uncomfortable position with his right arm resting on the windowsill, his chin resting on his right arm, and his left arm dangling out the window. He was watching the sunset in front of him.

It was beautiful. The sky looked like it was on fire where the sun slowly dived down toward the trees below, and it faded from that to a vibrant red, and into a golden yellow, into a palest of pale blue, that as he looked further up, the darker that blue became, until it began to look like the night that came every ten or so hours. The few stratus clouds that adorned the heavens looked remarkably like floating cotton candy as they reflected the colors of the setting sun. The brilliant orange that seemed almost pink, and the dark purple on the opposite side, that if you looked closely, had more of a dark bluish shade. The brightness of the sun shined through the green leaves on the trees, turning the sidewalk below a greenish tint. The cool and pleasant smelling evening breeze was blowing toward him. That combined with the brilliance of the scene before him made him feel the need to squint his eyes. He didn't want to though, because he knew that wide eyes always broadened the view, and he wanted to soak up every last bit of this view.

TJ sighed and wondered why he had never noticed this before. Nine years of life and nine years of vivid sunsets. Ten years of these peaceful evenings. All gone ignored. All those frustrated evenings spent crying into his pillow when just outside his bedroom window, this was going on. He found a new appreciation in the beauty of the world. He didn't know what it was, but it gave him this warm feeling inside, this excitement, this need to express whatever this was that he was feeling, and mostly what he was seeing. He wasn't a very expressive person though, and that made that hard to do.

He wished he could take a picture of this and treasure it forever, but cameras never captured the true colors. Also, they couldn't bring back the breeze, the slow drifting motion of the clouds, the feel of the evening, or the sound of the songbirds singing the last of their songs for the day, and then dwindling down as one by one they all returned to their nest, and prepared to sleep the night away. That was impossible too.

TJ sighed. He had this incredible scene displayed in front of him, and nothing to take from it, but the desire to be there the next evening for it. He couldn't possibly put what he was seeing and feeling into words. He loved it, but in in such an indescribable way. 'This is what Mikey does, I'll talk to him about it when he gets here' TJ thought. The thought of Mikey made him remember that his friends were all coming over, and it looked like it was going to be a dinner party. His mom had come home while he had been calling Gus, so she knew that she would be getting five young house guests over that evening. TJ had explained everything to her, and she had been fine with his plans, thank god. He hadn't thought about what his mother would think, and had upon realising his mother should have known, believed she'd strangle him when five kids showed up at her door. But luckily for him, she had agreed to make a large dinner that night. Something "kid friendly" she had promised him. TJ looked left down the street to see if he could see any of his friends walking toward his house. Nothing. He began to wonder what was taking his friends so long to finish their homework. It wasn't that challenging was it? Yeah there was a lot of it, he had to give them that much, but he had finished it already, and he always took the longest to do his homework. Apparently not tonight.

TJ was snapped out of his thoughts by the sound of his bedroom door being opened. He didn't bother turning to face whoever had snapped him back to reality. He didn't want to miss a second of the perfection in front of him.

"Oh!" Said TJ's mother, realising her son was half hanging out the window. "TJ are you alright?"

"Huh?" asked TJ, still not turning away from his vista. Mrs. Detweiler walked across TJ's bedroom and kneeled beside him. "Nice isn't it?" Asked TJ, somewhat distantly.

"It is" agreed the transfixed boy's mother "I didn't take you as much of a nature observer".

"I wasn't, but now I just, can't look away. You know, all these years I've had this just out my window, and I never noticed it. All those years I missed all of this" said TJ in a disappointed tone.

After a minute or two, Mrs. Detweiler spoke again. "Oh, dear, I came up here to ask you something and now I forget what it was" she thought for a moment or two, and then remembered. "Oh yes! I wanted to know if you wanted me to make some scalloped potatoes. I know how you love those".

At the mention of scalloped potatoes, TJ turned away from the sunset and looked up at his mother. "Should you even have to ask that question?" Asked a smiling TJ.

Mrs. Detweiler smiled. "Alright, I'll get everything ready. Come down and help me by peeling and cutting the potatoes. They're your friends after all".

"There's always a catch isn't there" sighed TJ, taking in the last of his sunset. "Alright, I'm coming" he smiled getting up from the windowsill. "But only until my friends get here".

Once downstairs, TJ washed his hand at the kitchen sink where he noticed there was a new mark on the bottom of the basin. "Hey mom," he asked, "where'd this come from?"

Mrs. Detweiler looked over her shoulder at what TJ was looking at. She saw him pointing into the sink where a bit of the paint had been chipped off. She laughed. "That was from the plate I dropped in there yesterday. From when you startled me".

"It left this?" Asked TJ in disbelief, running his fingers over the chip in the sink.

"Yep".

TJ walked away from the sink feeling guilty about his addition to the already chipped up sink. He pulled a knife from the knife drawer, and put it down on the cutting board. His mother handed him a potato and peeler. TJ took them and placed them down in front of him. He began his task of peeling the potatoes. A task that had only recently become as quick and easy as it was. His mother had taught him how to use the kitchen utensils correctly last year when he had begun to refuse the some of the food she would cook.

She had decided if that was the case, he would begin to make his own food, and clean up after himself as well. She remembered that Becky had been extremely jealous, seeing as she didn't get the liberty of making herself a separate meal until she was thirteen.

After two minutes TJ was peeling his third potato, and almost finished. After a year of practice, he was able to do this quickly without the fear of nipping his fingers in the process. Sometimes he'd purposely speed up just to annoy his mother, who still had these fears for him.

Becky was still at the table reading that same romance novel from that afternoon, but now only had a few measly pages to read before finishing the inch thick book. Turning the page, she looked up from her story to observe her little brother. Her jaw dropped at the sight of her brother taking his fourth potato, which his mother had only finished washing, and expertly beginning to peel it. She decided that she had been reading for too long and that she was simply seeing things. Weird things. She closed her book and left it facedown on the table and stretched.

TJ had five potatoes in all to peel and then slice. His mother would take the sliced potatoes and lay them out in a buttered pan, and layer by layer, add the creamy béchamel sauce over the potatoes. Yum. TJ knew the faster he got done with the peeling and the cutting the vegetables, the faster he got to eat them. With this in mind, TJ began to speed up even more, somehow managing to do so without making his peels look rushed and sloppy.

"TJ slow down!" Mrs. Detweiler exclaimed in a panicky tone. "It's nice to know you can go fast but it's safer to do it at a normal speed".

"Good luck with that Mom" Becky said at the table. "I've been trying to get him to act normal for years. It's never worked".

TJ and his mother laughed at this.

"What exactly is normal then Becky?" Asked TJ, smiling at his older sister.

Becky found herself in a situation where she couldn't find the words to say. She knew what she wanted said but no way to explain it. After a second or two, it came to her. She opened her mouth, about to speak, when she realised her sentence would make no sense. "Ugh!" She exclaimed slamming a fist down onto the kitchen table. "You know, normal!" The flustered sister squealed.

"Exactly" said TJ in a matter of fact tone, turning back to the cutting board where his mother had left the final potato. Once again, he had come out on top of his older sister. He smiled. Was it always going to be this easy? He knew it would. He finished up the last of his peeling, placed the now skinned potatoes on the counter top, took the cutting board over to the garbage, and using the knife, scraped the vegetable skins into bin. Returning to his duties at the counter, TJ laid the once again empty cutting board down next to the potatoes. He placed them on it and began to chop with the vegetables laying horizontally, and cutting vertically. This was another speedy task that TJ was excellent at. Beginning to cut, Becky looked up from the table where she had been daydreaming, trying to find a reasonable definition for "normal" when the sound of a blade hitting a plastic board in rapid succession snapped her out of her thoughts. She looked up in shock.

"God TJ!" She exclaimed.

TJ looked over his shoulder, smiling at his older sister. "What?" he asked.

"Why do you cut like that? It's... scary to think how you got so good"

TJ smiled, and said in the creepiest voice he could make, "Well then you'd better stay away from me. Today it's potatoes, tomorrow it could be YOU!" as he waved the knife around dangerously. He laughed as his disturbed sister took a precautious step back, turned back around and once again began to slice the potatoes.

"You're such a freak" said Becky said.

With that, TJ stopped cutting with a pronounced chop, and Mrs. Detweiler gasped, turning to face her daughter.

"Rebecca!" the shocked mother scolded.

"What?" asked Becky, confused. She had only called her brother a freak, she didn't see why it was such a big deal. It hit her she had done something wrong when TJ turned around to look at her with the most hurt expression she had ever seen. "TJ!" She gasped.

"So you think so too?" croaked TJ in a tone that was more like a sentence than a question. Becky could see the same look in TJ's eyes that Vince had seen the day before. Like he had before, she knew he was about to pull something.

"TJ, whatever you're about to do, don't do it" She said shakily, slowly taking a step toward her brother.

"Get away from me!" TJ screamed as he made for the staircase.

Becky had noticed to her horror that TJ was bringing the knife with him. Panicking now, Becky chased her crying brother up the steps, trying in vain to stop him with cries of "No!" And "TJ you're over reacting!". She was followed by her mother.

TJ, just like all the other times, ignored the desperate pleads coming from behind him. Mostly ignoring his sister's screams for him to "think about what you're doing!". Why should he listen to her? He had trusted her for all these years not to do what she had just done. Not to make fun of him because of his difference. She had broken her promise that she had made to him. His own sister! There were two specific words he wanted to hear his sister say. I'm sorry. It seemed like she was screaming everything else but. Just two simple words. Two basic words that any child would be taught to say the instant they hurt another person's feelings. They didn't come, so he continued his course toward his bedroom. He bolted inside and before slamming the door, turned around to scream "Go away!" to his pursuers. He locked to door and leaned up against it. He slid down until he was sitting with his knees up against his chest. He could feel his sister plow herself into his bedroom door. She tried the door, and realising was locked, told her mother to get the screw driver so she could unscrew the doorknob.

Just down the street, Spinelli had just finished her homework and told her mom she was leaving. She had headed out the door, and had begun to hurry toward her friend's house. She hadn't wanted to be any later than she already was. Spinelli had been third to finish her homework. The others had still either been working on theirs, or in Gretchen's case, finishing up chores. Spinelli had just begun to enjoy the evening when she had heard a familiar scream bounce off the houses around her. She recognised it as the voice of her friend. "Oh no" she said to herself, beginning to worry, and was now running down third street as fast as her legs could carry her.

TJ was still sitting with his back up against his door. His sister wasn't giving up any time soon he was sure of that. The constant banging on the door accompanied by the sobbing was a somewhat painful reminder of that. He looked at the knife in his right hand. It still had little bits of potato on it. He brushed them off and stared at his reflection on the blade. He could see his miserable expression staring right back at him. He wiped his tears away with the sleeve of his green sweatshirt, although he knew that they'd only be replaced by new ones. He realised what he had previously intended to do with the blade. He looked down and noticed that his left sleeve had been rolled up. TJ gasped.

On the other side of the door, Becky screamed. Upon hearing TJ gasp, she had assumed he had done it.

TJ hurriedly rolled the green sleeve back down. He realised he couldn't do this. Even if he wanted to desperately. He shouldn't, but there was still a voice in his head that argued with that though. A voice that reminded him that his own sister had broken her promise. That she didn't care, and that everyone else probably only pretended to care. He couldn't get it to go away. No matter how hard he tried, a part of him felt like if he did this, he'd be free from the torture completely and forever. TJ couldn't take it anymore. He screamed (which horrified Becky) and threw the knife in a random direction. It flew through the air and into his closet, where it landed with a thud. TJ gasped and his eyes widened. Uh oh. What if the knife had gone through the wall? His mom would kill him! He quickly ran over to the closet to inspect the damage. To his great relief there was no knife handle sticking out of the wall. There was a scratch mark though. The handle had hit the wall, causing the knife to bounce off and land in a pile of junk in the corner. TJ sighed in relief, which on the other side of the door, sounded a lot more like a sigh of death. Becky was going frantic.

TJ knew he'd still have a scratch on the wall to explain to his mother, but at least there was no hole that would need to be fixed. He walked over to pick up the blade when he realised what it was resting on. It was his old maroon hat. TJ picked up the knife and threw it aside. He took the old hat by finger and thumb and lifted it up in front of him and gave it a couple well needed pats to get some of the dust off of it. He walked out of his closet holding it in his hands and thought. This hat may have given him a different personality when he wore it last. Wouldn't that mean it could sustain him too? Would that work? Suddenly, a brilliant idea came to him. Maybe he didn't have to die as much as he had to change what he cared about. Maybe a different person wouldn't care at all what people called him. Wouldn't that be much better than ending his life? He sat down on the floor in the middle of his room and pondered this matter. He heard his mother return with a screwdriver and heard Becky starting to unscrew his doorknob. He had to think fast. What if he died doing this? 'Oh what the heck!' TJ thought, 'I stayed alive last time I'll stay alive this time. That's better than being dead any day'. TJ slowly began to bring the maroon hat toward his head.

Running down the street, Spinelli was aware that not all was well. Not only with her friend, but with the ground beneath her. It felt as if it were vibrating. She didn't think much of it until a low rumbling began. Then she began to worry about that too. She almost stopped, but she realised that a friend was worth more than any earthquake going on.

TJ could feel and hear it too, which confused him. He didn't think that his town had any fault lines. Neither did the surrounding areas. As he brought the other cap to his head, he put his left hand on the lid of his red baseball cap, ready to switch the hats as quickly as possible. He said his goodbyes to the person he was, but his fears were slowing him down. He wanted to get it done and over with but a part of him wouldn't allow that to happen. He tried taking a deep breath and ditching his fears, but that didn't work. The tremor was beginning to frighten him. Things in his room were bouncing all over the place. Things were falling off shelves and crashing to the floor. Shouldn't he get out of there? Yes yes he should, but before he could do anything, he felt a tug on the back of his sweatshirt strong enough to send him flying backwards through the air. In his shock he dropped the maroon cap that was just about to touch his forehead. He flew backwards and didn't seem to stop, and the low rumble he had heard was now replaced by a deep ominous tone that filled every corner of his ears. TJ had automatically closed his eyes when he was pulled backwards into the air. He was still flying by the way. Well, it wasn't like flying really, it was more like being a piece of paper in a wind tunnel. He didn't dare to even breathe. He didn't know where he was, where he was going, or why, but he didn't want the answers to those questions, right now all he wanted to know was 'what the heck is going on?'

Spinelli was approaching TJ's house as fast as she could. She was straining her eyes looking through her friend's open bedroom window to try and catch a glimpse of that red baseball cap. She didn't see anything, which she had expected. This earthquake was really beginning to bother her. It was hard just to keep her footing on the sidewalk with all the vibration. She had begun to worry that the houses on all sides were going to collapse, and obviously, their residents were fearing the same as they fled their houses. Spinelli found it hard to dodge all of the families running across the sidewalk. "Hey, watch it!" She yelled as she nearly ran into a small frightened boy. She had reached her destination, and it disturbed her that there was no one standing outside. She looked up her friend's bedroom window again and what she saw made her freeze where she was. Her jaw dropped and a green light beamed out the window. Spinelli stared in horror as it got brighter and brighter until she was forced to look away and cover her eyes. Less than a second later, Spinelli felt the earthquake come to an abrupt halt beneath her feet. Confused, she took her arm away from her face and took a look around. It seemed as if the earthquake had never happened. The houses were fine, and the families were standing outside their homes at the end of their driveways, silent and confused. She looked back up at the window where the light had been coming from. It was dark again. She blinked. The blinding light had left a the ghost of a red after image over her vision that didn't seem to want to go away, but she realised, that wasn't important. Shaking off the shock of seeing what may, or may not have just happened, she opened the front door and stepped into the house where her friend (she hoped), lived.

Far away, a boy wearing a red baseball cap was sitting unconscious in an old cellar room. He had passed out in shock when he had been unexpectedly pulled back into... somewhere, and taken away from his bedroom. TJ was slumped up against the wall in what looked like a very uncomfortable position and he was beginning to come to. He opened his eyes and blinked. He painfully lifted his head up and let out a small groan.

"About time you woke up" said an unfamiliar voice from somewhere in the room. TJ sleepily looked around for anyone. To his left, he could see a figure walking towards him. He could see that the figure was a kid. A boy. He only looked a little older than him. The strange boy stopped walking in front of TJ, and offered a hand down to him. TJ took it and heaved himself off the hard and cold floor and to his feet. "Geez" said the boy as he pulled TJ up. "you gotta lay off on the snacks kid".

TJ brushed off his pants as he frowned at the boy standing in front of him. "Yeah," he said in an irritated tone "say, could you be a good fella and tell me where I am?"

"Alright kid," said the boy, using his fingers to brush his long dark brown hair out of his face so that it swept across diagonally, and only covered his left eye. He looked TJ in the eye and said grimly, "Welcome to the future".


	7. John

"The future!" repeated TJ laughing. 'This kid is crazy' he thought. "Alright, come on seriously, where am I?" He said, calming down, and managing to suppress his laughter. The boy said nothing, and just stared at him. TJ's smile vanished instantly. "You're serious" he said. The boy nodded. TJ took a moment to let this sink in. He had been sucked into another time. Alright then, exactly when is now? "What year is it?" he asked the boy as he walked back over to the wall, leaned against it for support, and looked up at the single incandescent light bulb on the ceiling. He didn't think he could stand on his own right now. With what he just learned, he didn't think he would be able to stand on his own for a long time.

"It's 2018 kid" replied the boy.

TJ quickly did the math in his head. "So, I jumped twenty years into the future" he concluded. "And in those twenty years, my bedroom, which is on the second level of my house, becomes a cellar, below ground?" he asked, more for the purpose of making himself believe it than wanting an actual answer.

"If you were in your bedroom when you were pulled through the vortex, then yeah" the boy said, and then realising what TJ had just said, "This was your bedroom!?". TJ nodded, staring off into space. The boy was utterly bewildered. "And it was on the second story of your house?" He nodded again. The boy raised his eyebrows and blinked. "Guess that goes to show how much can change in twenty years, huh?" said the boy. There was a brief moment of silence before the boy spoke again. "You've got a lot more questions, I can see it in your eyes". TJ nodded again, turning his head to look at the boy. "Well, I've got answers, but we shouldn't talk in an unused storage closet " he said, "Follow me, kid" the boy gestured toward a door.

"Big closet" remarked TJ, who took one last look around the room before pushing himself off the cold concrete wall and somewhat unsteadily following the boy down the hallway, which looked remarkably like the enormous closet had.

It was all concrete as well. It didn't look like very clean concrete. TJ observed the brown stains on the floor that he passed by periodically, not daring to wonder what exactly it was he was treading on. Above him, there were long fluorescent lights lined up along the center of the ceiling, separated by a few feet in between, which gave off a dull greenish light that flickered every couple seconds. Every eight feet or so on both sides of hallway there were large black metal doors with large white numbers painted on them, which he assumed led into other rooms. The boy stopped at the door numbered #34. He took a card out of his pocket and slid it in the slot where a doorknob would usually be. TJ watched as the red light under the slot turned green. He heard a small metallic click and a quiet buzzing noise as the boy pushed open the large metal door and stuffed the card back into his pocket. He stepped inside and held the door open for TJ, who stared into the room.

Once the boy had turned on the lights TJ could see that the room was a decent ten feet across and maybe fifteen feet back. It was actually furnished. The walls looked like painted wall plaster. The floor was tile in front of the door, and a few feet into the room, carpet began. There was a coatrack to his left and a bunk bed in the far corner of the room. There was a piano in the corner opposite the bed, a nightstand on the side of the bed closest to him. Against the wall behind him and to his left there was a large desk, and in the center of the room there was a fair sized table with two chairs pushed into it.

"Well" said the boy, "you just gonna stand there or are you coming in?". Snapping out of his daze, TJ stepped into the cosy looking room, still a little shocked at the massive transition between the hallway and the room. "Welcome to the den" said the boy letting the door go and walking past him.

"Well, this is different," commented TJ as he continued to take in the room.

"Yeah," smiled the boy as he walked over to the bunk bed. "It used to look just like the rest of this concrete maze, but I was able to make some uh, improvements" he said proudly.

"You did this yourself?" Asked TJ in shock, looking at the boy.

"Yeah" the boy replied smiling. "They all laugh at it, but if I'm living in this room all my life, I might as well make it worth it. And plus, because of all this, I'm the only one who hasn't gotten sick within the last year besides my sister. The others get sick every other month or so. They've only got concrete surfaces and a bed in their rooms. My sister's doing good cuz I did this to her room too. She's on the other side of this place." He said, plopping himself down on the bottom bunk, kicking off his shoes, and once again flicking his long hair to the side.

"There are others?" Asked TJ.

"Yeah. Two behind every door, it used to be everyone except me had a roommate, now it looks like I got one too".

"And you have a sister?" He asked, staring at the floor.

"Yeah. She'd be in my room with me, but our quarters are separated by gender. Plus, she's not really in the resistance, she's just under our protection because she's my sister, you know? I worry about her sometimes though. She's the youngest kid in the fort and there are bullies around this place. She's tough and all, but she's got an attitude on her" he laughed.

TJ managed a smile. He couldn't help but think what his sister was doing now. Well, twenty years ago. She would have unscrewed the doorknob already, and burst into his room to find he was gone, and the window was open. She and mom were probably going crazy trying to find him. Little did they know, they'd never find him. His smile vanished and it became a small frown as the reality of this swept over him.

"What'ya standin' up for, kick off your shoes, leave them at the door and have a seat. Now, about those questions..." said the boy, prompting TJ to ask what he would.

TJ pulled his shoes off, leaving them tied as he always did and tossed them to the side of the door. He took the chair at the table closest to him and sat himself down sideways so he was facing the boy and thought of the question that he wanted answered the most. That was too hard for him to decide so he decided to just ask any random question that came to mind. Eventually he asked "what is this place?".

"It's the resistance. More specifically, resistance fort 1, living quarters, west wing, room #34".

"Resistance?" said a now concerned TJ, "against who?".

"The Tyrant" said the boy grimly. "Just as his name implies he's taken over the world".

"The world?!" exclaimed TJ, horrified.

"Well, parts of China are holding on still, the Philipines are still going strong, as well as Maui in the Hawaiian islands. Southern India and Sri Lanka are faltering and Japan is about to surrender" said the boy, as he looked down at the ground as well.

"Tyrant is right. Jeez, you would think president would be enough" said TJ more than a little angrily.

"Yeah kid" said the boy. "And speaking of the Tyrant, could ya take that hat off? He had one of those".

"A red baseball cap?" TJ asked.

"Yeah" said the boy. "And trust me, the other guys in here won't ask you nicely to take it off, they'll just sock ya and leave you bleeding on the ground. I learned the hard way". He said, opening his mouth and pointing to where his right front tooth no longer was.

TJ quickly removed his hat and stuffed it into his back pocket. He had both the necklace and card on him so that was okay. If a hat like his belonged to this "tyrant", he didn't want to wear it anymore. At least as long as he could go without it. Especially if he was going to get beaten up over it.

There was a new question that had popped into TJ's head. It wasn't important, and he knew that it was most likely classified information, but he decided to ask anyway. "The resistance has a whole system of underground forts? All over the world?"

The boy nodded. "They're scattered" he said. "There's at least one in each small former country, and larger countries have at least three. The former US has five though".

TJ frowned. "And all of these were built without the Tyrant knowing anything about them?".

The boy smiled and looked up. "The top of this place looks like an old house. A bunch of people came in, got rid of the old foundation, and made a new one to make this fort. No one except the people in the resistance know that this fort exist. To everyone else, it just looks like a bunch of people coming into an old house for shelter".

TJ nodded, and despite not being entirely satisfied with the answer he was given, asked his next question. "Who are you?" He inquired.

The boy flicked his hair to the side again and said "The name's John Becket. Age eleven, and I'm the youngest kid here in the resistance".

"Not anymore," said TJ smiling.

"No? How old are you?"

"I'm only nine." TJ said quietly, not knowing whether or not to be proud of this fact or not.

John smiled. "My sister's eight, but like I said, she's not really a part of the resistance. Next question".

TJ thought for a little while and then asked "Why am I here and how did I get here?".

"It's a part of the General's plan to restore the world back to it's former state" replied John. "He has what the world was like from the point of view of an adult, but he wanted the point of view of a kid too".

TJ frowned. "He could have just asked a kid on the street" he pointed out.

John shook his head. "The Tyrant was able to wipe out everyone's memories of what the world was like before his rule. The General needed someone from before twenty years ago".

"Wiped out people's memory?" TJ asked, not believing what he had just heard.

"Remember, it's 2018. We've got tech like ya wouldn't believe" John explained.

TJ was still confused. "Wouldn't that mean that the General's memory was wiped out too?" he asked. John shook his head.

"He was lucky. He was in the same room as the Tyrant when the memory wiping wave was sent out. The walls of the room could deflect the wave".

"So he was in the same room with the Tyrant. Even if he kept him memory, I'd say that's pretty unlucky. Unless he was about to take him down." TJ said.

"Yeah" said John. "He was trying to stop him from sending the wave out, but he didn't get there in time. Fortunately he managed to kill the machine before he split the joint".

"Oh" said TJ. "Well that answers why I'm here, but not how".

"Time machine" said John.

"Of course" said TJ, realising that that was kind of an obvious answer. "So when can I go back?" he asked.

John went silent and just stared at him. TJ looked up and saw the expression on his face. He instantly knew the answer would be something he wouldn't like. At all. TJ came to a conclusion.

"I can't can I?" said TJ, once again looking down at the carpet under his feet. John said nothing and slowly shook his head. The room stayed silent for a while. 'I'm stuck here' thought TJ miserably. 'I'm stuck in a time that I don't belong in. Years away from my friends and family and they'll never know where I am'. TJ shrugged his shoulders. "Well, I'm here now, might as well make the best of it" he said in a somewhat falsely optimistic tone. Apparently, John believed it.

"Yeah kid" said John. "Keep that mentality and you'll be able to survive this place a lot better than the most of us here".

TJ smiled. "I guess". He mumbled. "So" he said looking up again, "Looks like I'm going to be here a while, I might as well learn the history".

John smiled a little. "You want history? The Tyrant took over the world, the planet was sent into poverty and famine, almost everyone's homeless, plague is all over the place, and the Tyrant doesn't care. The General formed the resistance and here we are. There's your history".

"All that in twenty years?" asked TJ in shock.

"You got it kid" said John sadly.

TJ wondered if there were still sunsets. He guessed not. He assumed smog clouds must have replaced the blue sky. He then wondered who this General was. It occurred to him that he mustn't be too old to find it necessary to have a kid's point of view. He sounded cool. He decided to make this his next question. "Who is this General?".

At this John smiled proudly. "General Griswald. He's lead multiple operations to slowly cut the Tyrant down, all of which have been successful. I'm proud to serve under his command, and so is everyone else here. You should be too".

"Griswald!" TJ's eyes widened in shock, "Griswald as in Gusav Griswald?"

"The one and only!" Grinned John. "Why, d'ya know him?"

"Yeah" said TJ, "I knew him".

"Really?" Said John excitedly, "What was he like as a kid, huh? He never tells us that!".

TJ smiled. He knew if Gus didn't tell someone something it was for good reason. "I don't know," he said "what's he like now?"

"He's big and tall, he's buff..."

"Okay!" TJ interrupted, "that explains that." he laughed.

"What?" John frowned.

"He was uh... short when he was a kid. Very, um, yeah short."

John's jaw dropped. "Get out! He was a squirt?!"

"Yeah" TJ laughed, "bully target, safety man and great friend. That's the Gus Griswald I remember".

"You two were buds?" asked John, even more shocked.

"Yeah. He was coming over my house when I was..." TJ trailed off. He realised that his friends would also find he was missing. They would find stuff all over his bedroom fallen to the floor. And when they found the knife they would panic. "But that's all in the past" he finished, not wanting to think too much about the past now that he was stuck here.

"Cool!" exclaimed John. "It always helps to be on his good side kid, you being an old friend an all, he might go easy on ya!"

"Maybe" said TJ, not so sure. His older self was most likely brainwashed now, nothing like he formerly was. Roaming the dark, cold, and dirty streets. Doing nothing to stand up for the rights of the people like he normally would have done.

Suddenly, a loud buzzing sound rang around the room, rudely interrupting TJ's thoughts. He jumped sky high, making John snicker, and turned to find the source of the noise. A large speaker above the door that he somehow hadn't noticed before.

"Chow time" sighed John, getting up from his bed and heading over to the coat rack. TJ turned back to look at John, who he noticed he wasnt very enthused about the prospect of dinner. In fact he seemed particularly unenthused. In fact, he looked rather displeased. John took a large dirty towel from the coatrack. TJ heard an giant uproar in the hallway outside as doors were opened and all the occupants of the rooms flooded into the narrow cement passageway, and quickly made their way toward wherever the food was being served.

"What's the matter?" TJ asked him, standing up and pushing in his chair.

"Just uh, stand clear of the door" John said, as he leaned his head against the door, and put his hand on the doorknob.

From the other side of the door came loud shouts directed at room #34. The loudest of which was a prominent kick, which hurt John seeing as his head was lying on it, followed by a shout of "C'mon kid you can't hide in your hole forever!".

"Ah" said TJ, walking over to John's side.

"Stay back" warned John as he took a deep breath and prepared to face the pandemonium outside. Using it as a shield, John opened the large metal door but stayed behind it. TJ was about to peer out when bucket fills of water flew into the room. TJ jumped back in surprise and let out a quick gasp. John looked through the hinges of the door to make sure there weren't any more buckets waiting, and once he found there were none, stepped out from behind it, and once again flicked his hair to the side.

"Is that what they're all like around here?" asked TJ.

"Every day" said John miserably as he laid the towel he was holding down on the now soaked floor and patted it down to absorb some of the water.

"Jeez" said TJ as soon as he knew the rowdy crowd had left the hallway. "And now I know why you put tile down here".

"Yep" grunted John as he stood back up blowing the hair out of his eyes. "Jerks".

"Bully target huh?" Asked TJ sympathetically.

"Worse" replied John. "Bully magnet".

John left the towel on the cold tile floor and let the door close behind the two of them, waiting to hear the click of the lock before starting down the hall. The last time his door hadn't closed all the way he had returned to a room flooded with an inch of water by the other boys in the west wing.

"Why don't you stand up to them?" Asked TJ as the two of them walked down the hall, back up and past the closet.

"I've tried" John said, "but it cost me my tooth".

"Well, how long ago was that?" asked TJ.

"I think I was your age. I had just joined the resistance because it gave me and my sister food and a roof to sleep under, and there was even a chance to revolutionize the world".

"It's been two years John, you're stronger now!" TJ encouraged.

"Same goes for them" John pointed out glumly. "Listen kid, sometimes ya just gotta accept your rank in the world. I had to, it's best you do too".

"I cannot in good conscience do that" stated TJ, following John as he rounded a corner into a larger, and much longer hallway.

"_Please_!" John implored him, "you shouldn't have ta learn the hard way".

"Just hear me out," said TJ. "When the cafeteria ladies at my school wouldn't give us the good food we deserved, I tried to bring it to the people myself. When General Gus was a kid and got his name taken away by the king of the playground because he was the new kid, me and my friends helped him fight to get it back. When we were all forced to stay inside for recess because it was raining and kids were turning into mindless zombies from being inside for too long, me and my friends defied the ones in power and went outside anyway. Whenever the big guys knocked us down, we wouldn't just sit there and let it happen, me and my friends, we'd stand and fight until we got what we deserved!"

"Really?" gasped John. "Didn't you get in trouble with em'?"

"Well, yeah but it was all worth it. There are things in life worth fighting for John. You've got the world to fight for yeah, but don't you ever forget. You're important too".

"You really did all that?" asked John more than a little awed.

"Yep, and that's just the start" said TJ proudly. "There are plenty of others, but it'd take me a while to think of all of them".

"Wow. Guess you could survive this giant cinder block" said John.

"And that's exactly the attitude that'll get you nowhere. You gotta stand up for yourself, just as you would for the world" in a way making a plead of his own.

"I dunno kid," said John. "There are billions of people in the world, most of which are worse off than me. They'll always come first, and my little sis too".

"So you're not doing anything about it?" asked TJ.

"Nope".

TJ sighed. He had assumed John would have changed his mind by now. Obviously, he had assumed wrong. He was stubborn, and that was good if he used it when it was needed, but now, all it did was hurt him. He knew that he was going to have to be stubborn then too, and like he had done for the last nine years of his life, not give up. He knew he had to get John to start fighting for his rights but, how to get him to do it? Blackmailing wouldn't work, and besides it would just hurt him even more. Encouragement through speech wouldn't help either, judging by what he had just tried, and failed. So if there was nothing he could say, what could he do? He thought through some of the possible options, all of which he knew had no likelihood of success. Then it hit him. This is what he did, this is what he was good at. He could just simply show him how it's done. Maybe that would encourage him to do it himself. He'd have to get him to start fighting, so maybe if he set an example... "Then I will" TJ said.

John stopped dead in his tracks. "What?" he said, not believing what he had just heard. TJ turned to face John and walked backwards.

"Then I will. Trust me, I know what I'm doing". TJ said calmly with a sly smile starting to spread across his face.

"You're crazy" John said as he began to walk again.

"Maybe" said TJ, "but at least we'll be free from them".

"Like they're gonna listen to you" said John.

"They probably won't, but right now they don't need to".

"Your point?" asked John, confused.

"You just gotta get your voice out. You really don't need to be listened to, just be heard".

"What good'll that do?" asked John hopelessly.

"Hey, at least it's something. Isn't that better than what's going on now?" asked TJ

"I guess so, but..."

"Ok then. Leave me to it. Like I said, I know what I'm doing". Said TJ smoothly as he turned on his heel and continued to walk forward down the hall, then he stopped and turned back toward John. "And where the heck am I going, I don't know my way around this place".

"You got that right" said John as he walked up to a set of double doors on the left side of the hallway that TJ had passed and not even noticed. TJ shook his head and followed him through the doors.

The same pandemonium that had been in the west wing earlier now occupied the cafeteria, and this time it was worse. There were Girls. It was a large, and yes, concrete room with the usual things you would find in a cafeteria. Long tables filling up most of the room and a long line of hungry people snaking it's way around all of them. They were all waiting somewhat impatiently for their third meal of the day. It terrified TJ that there was nothing telling him whether or not the meal was even worth waiting in line for. With the added factor of still processing the fact that he was now twenty long years from home, and struggling with it, he eventually decided against eating that night. At least what he assumed was night.

"Where do you normally sit?" he asked John over the roar of the crowd.

"In that corner over there" he said, pointing to a corner in the room where there weren't any people sitting around. "Why, you're not gonna eat?" he asked.

"Nah. Still a little too stirred up about what happened today". Said TJ.

"Your funeral" shrugged John as he quickly walked toward the end of the line.

TJ walked over to the table where John had pointed to and sat down in the seat next to the one closest to the walls. He guessed John would want that one. He surveyed the scene in front of him. Jeez. When John had said he was the youngest person in here, he wasn't kidding. Everyone else looked so much older. Even though there weren't any adults compared to John they were all so much older. Speaking of John, he decided to see how he was doing. TJ looked over to the line to find it wasn't there anymore. It had already made significant progress around the cafeteria. In fact, there were only six people left in line waiting for their food. He was at the back of the line, and holding a brown cafeteria tray drumming his fingers on the bottom. He looked... excited wouldn't be the right word... alert would have to do. TJ figured he'd have to be. With all the other kids in here waiting to bash him to pieces and all, there's no telling when it would happen or where it would come from. He watched as John got his food, left the line and began to walk toward the table. On his way he was joined by a smaller looking girl that loosely resembled him.

TJ assumed this was the little sister John had told him about. She was tall for her age, just about the same height as John, who was short for his age. She had straight, extremely long dark hair brought back in two neatly tied pigtails. They were long enough to reach down to the middle of her calf as they swung back and forth. TJ wondered how much it hurt to have that much weight constantly tugging on the back of her head, and pulling every time the pigtails swung back and forth too. John had asked this question a million times before and had always got the same answer. "It don't hurt, and I like it this way" she would always tell anyone who asked that question, and almost everyone did ask that question. Except for the boys without sisters of course. They didn't understand the girl stuff.

TJ watched as the two of them talked and came closer to the table. He heard the tail end of their conversation as they sat down in the seats he has assumed they would. John in the seat closest to the walls and his sister in the seat next to it.

"Are you the kid?" the sister asked.

"Yeah" said TJ looking down at the table. There was a moment of silence between the three kids as two of them ate their food, which actually didn't look half bad, and the remaining kid thought. John could see TJ looking at the table, concentrating hard.

"You're really planning on doin' it?" asked John, a little irritated that he hadn't listened to him.

"Yeah" said TJ quietly, still working hard on his plan, and not really paying much attention to the outside world.

John looked at him and raised his eyebrows before looking back down to his meal and shaking his head. He knew now he wasn't going to beat the kid at this. He was stubborn, just like himself, and he wasn't going to back down no matter what he said or did. He decided he'd just have to let him learn on his own why he shouldn't do this. He took a deep breath and reluctantly said to TJ, "Best o' luck to ya then".

"M hm" hummed TJ, still deep in thought. His plan was really beginning to come together. He knew that sooner or later at lunch, someone would come up to John to harass him. That would be when he would stand up to the guy for John. He knew that everyone would turn against him. He knew that the bully would want to teach him a lesson and show him who was in charge, and he knew he couldn't win against any of the people in here. They were all too muscular for him to even think about taking on. Even the girls. If they were to corner him, he was doomed. He thought that maybe if he was about to get creamed, John might be motivated to fight against them. Either that or he'd let it happen, and he'd be history. TJ grimaced. He knew the latter was more than just a possibility, and that his plan was beyond desperate, but there was a slight chance that the first possibility may occur, and he was willing to take that chance. He exhaled, realising that he had been holding his breath and relaxed.

"Got a plan?" asked John, noticing that TJ had become less tense.

"I think so. It's risky, but I got one" said TJ only semi confidently.

"You're absolutely sure you want to do this?" said John slowly and clearly.

"I've got to". TJ said.

"Do what?" asked John's sister curiously.

"He wants to do somethin' to get us out from under da pile" John explained.

Her eyes widened. "Kid, don't do it! Take my brother's for it, it's a bad idea!"

John sighed. "I've been telling him that since he came up with the idea Riki. Don't waste your breath".

"Your name's Riki?" asked TJ looking over at her.

The girl nodded, and stared at him. She didn't need to speak at all for TJ tell what she meant. Her eyes screamed out 'Just think about it'. He ignored that though, because he had already done all the thinking he needed to. He wasn't doing this for himself, he was doing it for John, who needed it more than anyone else in here. Even Riki didn't seem as down as John did. He looked away. He wasn't going to let her get to him. He had made up his mind and there wasn't anything that anyone could do about it. He was doing this no matter what the others said, and he didn't care what happened to him in the process.

As one of the older kids from the table in the center of the room got up and started to walk toward his table, TJ took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He was beginning to regret his decision to go forward with his plan, but he knew that he couldn't back out. He'd have to try. He opened his eyes and, like many times before, made himself forget his fear.

"Oh, not Terry. Not today" pleaded John to the heavens.

TJ saw his window of opportunity and decided to take it. When things start to get heated, he'd get himself involved.

"Well Becket" said Terry, slamming his palms down on the lunch table, making everything on it, including John and Riki, jump. "It seems we meet again".

"The usual, or double duty?" asked John to Terry miserably.

"I was real stressed today" said Terry cracking his neck and knuckles both ways. "Double duty". Terry brought his fist back and hurled it forward.

"Your name's Terry, right?" asked TJ calmly.

Terry's fist stopped less than a centimeter from John's nose. John had closed his eyes and flinched, and when nothing came, opened his eyes again to make sure he was still alive. When he did, all he could see were five bony knuckles less than an inch from his face.

"Well Johnny boy, you got yourself a little friend" said Terry smoothly, removing his fist from John's face, and putting it back in it's normal position. "And yeah. Terry Sullivan. That's me".

John groaned and let his forehead fall to the table with a loud thud. He was actually doing it. The kid was going to get his head cut off, and he didn't plan to watch it all go down.

"Well Terry, I've got a little something I'd like to say to you".

Terry immediately became angry, and pointing his finger in TJ's face and said, "you better watch your tone, kid". This of course caught the attention of the whole cafeteria, which went silent and turned toward the action in the corner.

TJ stood up and looked the bully in his cold green eyes and said "you'd better quit this thing with John, or be prepared to face my wrath".

Terry and the rest of the cafeteria laughed hysterically at this. TJ kept his firm, no nonsense look, and continued with, "what's so funny about that? It'll be like hell on earth for the next few days if you don't cut it out".

"What can you do?" asked Terry, still laughing. "Your just some dumb kid".

"And you're just some dumb teenager. Now scram". TJ said, sitting down again.

The cafeteria gasped and an expression of rage washed over Terry's face. "What'd you say kid?" He asked angrily.

"You're just some dumb teenager" TJ repeated, still calm. "Now scram".

"No one, talks to me like that!" screamed Terry as he grabbed the front of TJ's shirt and lifted him up out of his seat. Still TJ remained perfectly calm. "No one!"

"I just did" said TJ, smoothly as ever as his legs dangled in mid air.

Terry screamed in anger and carried the still calm boy up and over the table and over to the middle of the cafeteria. John stood up in terror, feeling TJ's weight leave the bench. He gasped at seeing his room mate being lifted into the air and brought over to the other kids at the center table. John didn't know what to do but he felt he had to do something. Terry was going to do something terrible to that kid if he didn't. He knew there was one thing he could do, but he knew he shouldn't, no, couldn't. It would make life even worse than it already was.

"Do it" said Riki to her brother. "You know it's the only way to get Terry off of him and you've hidden it long enough". John closed his eyes. He knew his sister was right. He needed to do it. It was fine if it was him being bullied, so he didn't reveal it then, but a new kid? Unexceptable, and it was the time to do what he now felt he should have done long ago.

TJ was being held up in the air by Terry, and preparing to get socked in the face until he bled, and then some. Everyone in the cafeteria except for John and Riki had surrounded the bully, waiting to see what would happen next. He had assumed his plan had been an utter failure, but he wasn't going to let that show, nor was he going to show his fear to Terry. He just remained calm, refusing to give the older boy the satisfaction of reducing him to nothing.

Terry hated this. Why was this kid so hard to crack? Why was he not scared of him? Everyone was scared of him. Everyone. He decided he'd have to teach the kid a lesson. A lesson he'd never forget. He once again drew back his fist. He was about to drive it into TJ's face when what look like a bucket's worth of water flew out from nowhere and hit Terry in the side of the head, making him jump in surprise and drop TJ.

TJ fell to the cold, hard concrete floor and looked around for the source of the water. He found no bucket, but a very angry looking John standing in the corner with Riki, now holding a black stick in each hand. TJ was confused. He hadn't seen these before, what the heck were they, and where'd all that water come from?

"Get off that kid!" He heard John yell.

TJ allowed a smile to creep across his face. Apparently his plan did work after all!


	8. A Special Skill

I feel like I'm copying from avatar the last airbender, but this is a big part of the story. Hope everyone likes this chapter anyway.

* * *

The whole cafeteria gasped as they turned and saw John and the anger in his eyes, and heard his shout. No one ever dared do anything to Terry. Ever. Terry turned to the smaller boy in anger.

"I didn't know you had it in you Becket" said the bully through gritted teeth.

"I'm not going to just stand here, and watch you do the same thing as what you did to me, to this kid. Not anymore!" John screamed across the room.

"Where'd you learn the stunt? You couldn't move more than a drop before". Terry said in a low rumbling tone.

'What?' Thought TJ. His head was spinning. Move a drop? What in the world?

"I've always been able to. Always. I've just never showed it" said John in the same low tone. Terry scoffed at this. "But that's not the point. The point is that every time a new kid comes in here, you gotta beat em up. Torturing them to the point that they up and leave. The ends today!" John hollered. "It looks like you've forgotten why you're here and what you're fighting for. You've forgotten what it's like to be alone on the streets, lucky to have food and shelter every couple days. Cold and alone. Well I can't forget. I'm here to rebel. I'm here to help revolutionize the world. If you're too busy doing this, it's time you reconsider your position here. In the resistance we're supposed to fight together to bring the Tyrant down. How are we supposed to do that when all you and your friends focus on is your place on the pyramid! Stop this here and now and focus on what's really important!"

Terry could see people were starting to side with John, and he couldn't have that. TJ watched as the bully pulled two black sticks of his own. What was he going to do with them? Was he going to start stabbing people with them? Was he going to fling them at John?

"Those words are gonna burn Becket" screamed Terry.

"Try me" said John.

TJ was really getting anxious. What was up with the dang sticks already? He'd get his answer sooner than he though. It made him scream when Terry flicked the sticks forward and back as if cracking a whip, and two enormous jets of flame erupted from their ends. The flames shot forward across the room and toward John, who tightened his grip on his sticks, and flicked them upward. TJ fell silent in horror as the flames enveloped John and Riki dove to the side. He couldn't see the figure of the boy standing there anymore. He just sat there, mouth agape, tears starting to form in his eyes. He had witnesses murder. It took him by surprise that when Terry stopped his flames and dropped his arms to his sides, and John was still standing there, not burned in the least. He had surrounded himself with a shield of water. He saw John smile and, with his sticks pointing upward in his fists, punched out. TJ watched on in shock as the whole forward face of his water dome shot out, froze and continued to shoot toward Terry, who didn't react in time. TJ saw the thick ice sheet collide with the bully, sending him flying backward a good teen yards or so.

TJ laid himself back down on the cold cement floor and stared up. Not even at the ceiling. Just, on. This was all too much for him. First, time travel, then he finds out the world has been conquered, and now people can move fire and water. What else was going to happen in the next five minutes? Would he find out people could FLY... he shouldn't have thought that. He should NOT have thought that.

Terry now sat on the floor, frozen in shock. So was everyone else. Like the bully had said before, John couldn't move a drop. Now here he was doing this. Terry was exhausted from his quick blast, but John didn't seem phased at all.

"Keep of of the little people will ya?" He shouted as he stormed off toward the door, with Riki not far behind him, leaving the rest of the cafeteria with their shocked and bewildered looks on their faces.

TJ realised his only friend in here had left the room. Not wanting to linger with near the bully, he got up and followed the siblings out the door, leaving Terry to wonder 'what the heck just happened?'

"John, hold up!" Yelled TJ, running almost as fast as he could down the dirty hallway to catch up with him.

John and Riki turned and saw him, and waited for TJ to catch up to them.

TJ stopped at John's side and tried to catch his breath. He really needed to exercise more often. "Thanks for that back there" he said in between breaths.

"No problem kid. Thank you too" said John. "You may have set me up, but it was for good cause".

"You knew?" asked TJ, smiling, and with the others, started down the hall again.

"I do now" grinned John. TJ laughed. John was more like him than he thought.

"It was very brave of you" said Riki, "to put yourself in danger and all, just to help my brother".

"Thanks" said TJ. "It was brave of your brother to do what he did too" he said looking at John. "But that's the part that gets me. What exactly was... that. The thing with the water?".

John frowned and tilted his head. "No one's got elemental control where you came from?" he asked.

"Nope" said TJ.

"Well, it's some sort of spiritual power you get when you experience pure rage. After that, depending upon what part of your anger was strongest, you have control over fire, water, earth, or air. If you're completely taken over with anger at a point you're able to control everything from then on. Not just the four elements, I really mean anything".

"Elemental control" said TJ, confused. "Then what's with the sticks?" he asked.

"They're purifiers. Using them makes you stronger. They get rid of the junk energy that would normally get in the way of the control".

"Ok" said TJ, not entirely comprehending, but enough to give him a rough idea.

"Yeah. Um, Riki, I know you were just gonna walk with me to my room before going back to yours, but could ya stay for a while? I got a lot to explain and you know how I am with words. It might help if you're there to uh..."

"Translate?" Laughed Riki.

"Hey, I'm bad with words, but not bad enough I'd need a translator" John smiled. "But yeah I guess"

"Only for about a minute or two, the buzzer's gonna ring again soon and I don't wanna be seen in the west wing" said Riki. The three of them turned the corner into the small west wing and they found their way to room #34, where John slid his card in the slot and unlocked the door. When he opened the door, they were met my a filthy and damp towel on the floor.

Riki sighed. "They didn't do it again did they?" she asked.

"Riki, they do it every day" John told his sister, holding the door open, and looking at the heap of stained fabric. He once again took out his sticks from their pouch on the side of his pants and pointed them at the towel. He lifted the sticks up and as he did so, the water from it floated up into the air. "Stand clear" he said, as he flicked his sticks behind him, making the water fly out the doorway and splattering against door # 33. Terry's door. He put the sticks away in their pouch and stepped inside his room, the others not too far behind. He told TJ to close the giant metal door behind him, and took a deep breath before walking over to the bunk bed and sitting himself down. Riki walked over and sat down beside him. TJ just walked over to the table and sat in the same chair as before, and in the same way, sideways, facing the bunk bed.

"Alright, so what are we talking about?" asked TJ.

"Elemental control and other things that come up along the way" said John.

TJ nodded. "Alright. What do I need to know about it?" He asked.

"Well, you don't need to know, it's just best to". Said John. "Now, like I said. Elemental control is unlocked by a fit of pure anger. After that, a part of your spirit has been concentrated enough to move one of the elements. Which one it is depends upon which part of your anger concentrates your spirit. People who control water are aquadominant, people who control earth are terradominant, people who control air are aerodominant, and people who control fire are pyrodominant. I'm aquadominant, so I have control over water".

"Where'd you get the water in the first place?" Asked TJ. "It looked like it came from out of nowhere".

"Concrete is very absorbent". Explained John. "There's plenty of water in this place. It's in the air too. I'll just condense it sometimes".

"Okay" nodded TJ, it was beginning to make a little more sense.

"Yeah," said John "and there's one last class of controllers. The omnidominant. The omnidominant have control over everything and I mean anything. Except life. No one can bring someone who's dead back to life, but just about anything. Even non physical things like sound, light, space, and even time".

"Time?" asked TJ. "Maybe if I find an omnidominant I can ask them to send me back!"

"Um, that'd be kinda hard, kid" said Riki. "There aren't any living omnidominants on the planet. There was only one and he died of old age last year" she explained.

"Okay" said TJ glumly.

"Anyway," John continued, "to become omnidominant, anger has to completely take over your thoughts and actions. Every last neuron has to be focused on that anger. It's rare anyone gets that angry, and I hope you never have to get that angry kid. Even if you get those abilities, it's not worth it".

"I don't think I could even get that angry" said TJ.

"That's good" said Riki. "Well, I'd better split, the other guys'll be headin' back soon. Don't wannna be here for em" she said standing up and walking over to the door. "Sorry I couldn't stay that long John" she said sadly.

"It's aright, sorry I had you come in here for nothin' guess I'm better with words than I thought" said John.

"It's alright" smiled Riki as she opened the door, walked out into the hallway, and set off toward the east wing. The door slowly closed behind her, leaving the two boys alone.

TJ was now beginning to think of this elemental control thing as less of an oddity, and more as a really cool skill, but if that was so, "Why'd you hide all this?" asked TJ.

"I really didn't want em' to know" said John looking down.

"Why?" Asked TJ, puzzled "This is awesome!".

"Yeah, but the thing is, the best controllers, they're always being challenged and crowded around. They're never left alone. I'm an Introvert, I get off better alone. I can't handle all that. I love that time after training when I can just come back in here and be alone in the quiet. I can't do that with everyone poundin' on my door demanding a duel. All they want's to prove they're better than me anyway" said John. "That's all they ever do. Fight just to prove they're better than one another.

"Oh! Am I intruding on your alone time?" asked TJ.

"No, no" laughed John "You seem like a good kid, and even I need a friend sometimes".

"Okay" said TJ in relief. "Good to hear".

The buzzer sounded, once again making TJ jump sky high. "Jeez!" he exclaimed, "They've gotta quiet that thing down".

"Don't worry," laughed John "you get used to it"

"After how many months?" joked TJ. Successfully judging by John's laughter.

"Y'know kid, I'm really starting to like you" grinned John as he swung his feet up onto his bed and laid down. "You can get yourself situated in the top bunk" he said. "Bedtime's in five minutes" he said, looking at his watch.

"Seven thirty's a little early for bedtime don't you think?" asked TJ walking over to the ladder on the bunk bed and beginning to climb.

"Not if you have five o'clock roll call" said John.

TJ nearly fell off the ladder. "Five o'clock roll call!" he exclaimed. "Everyone has to wake up at five o'clock?" he asked in horror.

"Four fifty if you want to make it in time" said John smiling.

TJ groaned. "Then I really should have gone to sleep soon as I got here. I'll be beat in the morning".

"I got it worse" said John "I've got insomnia".

"Jeez" sighed TJ, continuing his ascent "wouldn't wanna be you" he said.

"No you wouldn't" laughed John.

TJ sat down on the surprisingly soft bed, and looked around. Everything looked so much smaller. Even the giant desk didn't seem as big. "Dang it!" He said, coming to a sudden realisation. "I should've turned off the lights while I was down there shouldn't I".

"No" said John. "That happens automatically. They'll shut off in four minutes".

"Then why do you have a light switch?" asked TJ.

"I don't know. It works, but I only use it in the day" said John.

The two boys rested in their bunks in silence, each having their own train of thought. TJ was thinking about a number of things. His main thought being that he'd never see his family the way he knew it again. He'd never see his friends the same way either. He'd never be able to go back to them, and they'd never be able to get to him. He was stuck here, pretty much alone, in a time where he didn't belong, no family, perhaps two friends (which wasn't the same as having his old friends), and surrounded by bullies. John was thinking about what to when he was crowded tomorrow, being challenged by every controller known to the resistance. He hoped it would just be as simple as turning down all duels, but knew nothing was ever that simple. They'd probably start getting violent over any rejection he made, and he wasn't going to risk that. He'd just have to ignore everyone as best he could, and he was bad at ignoring things like that. Very bad.

It was TJ who eventually broke the solid two minute silence. A question had formed when he had begun to think about things to do now that he was stuck here. "So, what do you for fun?" he asked John.

"See that piano in front of you?" said John.

TJ crawled over to the footboard of the bed and peered over it. Below, he could see the upright piano he had scanned over in his first survey of the room. "Yeah" he replied.

"That's what I do to pass the time. Play that" said John. "I'm the only music kid in here. And I take it to an extreme. I can play that thing for days straight without getting bored. Even if all I played was the same song over and over again".

"Wow" said TJ in surprise. He didn't know if any of his friends had as long an attention span as that. Not even Vince could focus on purely sports for days straight. "Who's songs do you like to play?" asked TJ, deciding it was time to learn more about the roommate he'd have until the resistance wasn't needed anymore.

"My own really" said John. "I don't do a lot of covering, I just play, and what happens happens".

"You write your own songs?" asked TJ in surprise. He knew Mikey wrote poetry, but writing whole songs seemed more challenging.

"Yeah" said John. "Sometimes I'll give em' words, but I'm bad at lyrics. Really bad, so the majority of my songs are just the piano. Y'know, you seem like a guy that's good with words".

"Huh?" asked TJ, somewhat confused. What ever made him think he was good with song lyrics?

"You seem like that leader that always gives the powerful speech that can bring everyone together. I didn't mean with song words if that's what you were confused about. I don't know how I made the connection between song words and speeches, just the weird way my head works I guess" said John.

"Oh, ok" said TJ, now understanding what John had meant. Following this was another moment of silence. TJ took this time to lie down and get himself comfortable in his bed, which wasn't hard at all. The beds were really soft, even softer than his own at home.

"I've got somethin' to show you" said John after about a half a minute's quiet.

"What is it?" asked TJ looking up at the ceiling.

"Just wait till the lights go out, you'll see" said John.

"Can't you just tell me now?" asked TJ impatiently.

"Relax kid!" laughed John. "You can wait eighteen seconds right?".

"Eighteen seconds?" TJ asked. "This was the longest five minutes of my life and this'll be the longest eighteen seconds".

John laughed. "You thought this room was cool with the lights on?" asked John, "Well check it out in four, three, two, one".

TJ put his fingers in his ears and closed his eyes. The buzzer rang again,and the lights flashed out. TJ opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling. He frowned. There didn't seem to be anything different.

"Look at the walls" said John below him. TJ sat up, and did what he was told.

"Woah!" he exclaimed when he saw what he did.

"I know right?" said John after yawning. The room really did look amazing. There was luminescent writing on the walls. Everywhere the two of then looked there was a poem or phrase written in glowing ink.

"Some days you're the windshield, others your the bug" TJ read off of the wall across from him.

"That one was fun to write up there" said John. "This one's one of my favorites" he said pointing to the wall next to the door.

"It's always darkest just before the dawn" TJ read. As he continued among the texts, he found his favorite. "Even smog clouds have a silver lining" he laughed.

"That's one I came up with myself" said John. "I don't really know what I originally meant by that, but it sounds cool, huh? My favorite's that one right there" John said, once again pointing to a part of the wall.

TJ looked to where his roommate was pointing and read out loud,

Catching comets and chasing cars  
In this dreamy world of ours  
Watching rainbows turn to gray  
Watching blue skies fade away  
-J.A.B. & E.J.B.

"I like that" said TJ, "It's a little sad though. If my friend Mikey were here..." TJ trailed off. "Man, I gotta stop thinking about that" said TJ, laying back down on the soft bed.

"Yeah, might help if you did" agreed John.

"So," said TJ in a attempt to get his mind off of that, "how'd you do all this?".

"I just controled a bunch of this glowing stuff I found in a bottle on the streets. I guess it was some kind of old kid toy stuff that never got opened. It said non toxic, so I used it to write the words on the walls".

"Okay" said TJ, "and I've got another question. What can the Tyrant control?"

"The Tyrant can't. He's never gotten that angry before. He has no reason to either. His life's never been ruined. It a good thing too. If he could, I swear we'd all be goners. That's why a lot of the controllers over pride themselves with their abilities. It's the one positive thing that they have that the Tyrant doesn't" answered John.

"Alright, one more question for you" said TJ.

"Last one" yawned John.

"What's the Tyrant's name?" TJ asked.

"His name" John growled. "Why would you want to know his dang name?"

"Just curious" replied TJ.

"I'm not cursing my own lips by saying it, kid" said John.

"C'mon" pleaded TJ. "If I'm going to be here a while I might as well know".

After a moment of silence, John sighed. "Alright, fine" he said. But still, TJ had to wait. John was still to hesitant.

"Soooo?" TJ said, urging the older boy to spit the "dang name" out.

"Theodore J. Detweiler" John spat in absolute disgust.

TJ could swear his heart skipped a couple beats. He was entirely horrified. He was trying with all his power to suppress his scream. 'ME?' he thought. Suddenly he had a million questions he wanted answered, all of which he was to afraid to ask.

"Speaking of names," John continued, "can't believe it took me so long to ask but, what's yours?".

TJ's mouth ran completely dry. "Uh..."


	9. Ted Jacobs

I just wanted to say that all of the poems in this story are mine. Everything except the phrases (except the smog cloud one I did write that one) are mine. Also there are actual versions of the songs on my soundcloud for those who would like to listen. Resonanceme. The profile is the same. Oh! And hope you like the cover I made for this story.

* * *

There is an evil man in the world. He's conquered the vast majority of the planet, and he's brainwashed the people. Because of him, smog clouds fill the skies, rendering the once transparent atmosphere opaque. Because of him, few people have houses to go to at night, leaving the many homeless to roam the filthy streets, hoping for water the next day, maybe even food. Because of him, people are dropping like flies from plague, starvation, and mass suicide. This man is the man who TJ Detweiler has just been told he is. The Tyrant.

TJ's heart and head were racing. He had to find a name. Fast. He couldn't say his real name. No, he had to keep that top secret. He still needed something to call himself, but nothing was coming to mind.

"Kid, It's not like you have the same name as the Tyrant, spit it out!" John laughed. TJ laughed a little nervously along with him. He had to come up with something. It didn't matter if it was good or not it just had to be something, and it had to be NOW.

"I'm Ted" said TJ, still trying to find the last part of his name. "Ted... uh, Jacobs, yeah. Ted Jacobs".

"Alright, that'd explain it" said John. "You have the same first name. I feel sorry for ya bud, but hey! You can still pride yourself in not being the same person, right?"

"Uh, sure" said TJ, shakily. "I sure can".

"Ok Ted, try to catch some z's. You've got less than nine and a half hours till you gotta be up again" said John. "And tomorrow's a big day for ya. You've gotta get sworn into the resistance".

"Oh, really?" said TJ, pretending to sound excited. 'Great. Just, great' he thought.

"Yeah, and the entire resistance will be there to watch" said John.

"Cool!" Just had to put the icing on the lethally toxic cake.

"And General Griswald too! Hey, he might even recognise you!".

"That'd be the best!" With a radioactive cherry on top. Tomorrow didn't seem like it could get any worse, but he wasn't going to say anything, just in case something else decided to go wrong.

"Well, better hit the hay or we'll be like zombies in the morning" said John.

"Ok, goodnight John".

"Night Ted".

TJ waited for a heavier breathing to begin in the bunk below him, which would signify that his roommate had fallen asleep. He waited and waited for what seemed like hours, which was really only about a half hour. TJ remembered John had said he suffered from insomnia, and that might be why he was taking so long to doze off. He knew now that he'd have to wait a really long time before he could do what he wanted to do. Finally, after over an hour of waiting, the sound of faint snoring could be heard from below. TJ took a deep breath, reached down into his back pocket, and reluctantly drew out his red baseball cap. He made it three dimensional again, and held it in his still somewhat shaky hands, looking at his red head garment. He stared at it a while before somewhat hesitantly putting it back on his head and twisting it backwards. Even though he knew he had to wear it to stay alive, he almost didn't want to anymore. Yeah, it was his signature and his trademark, it was him, but he didn't... well, he didn't want to be him anymore. He was the Tyrant. HE was capable of evil. He didn't want that. He couldn't live with that, he had to change it and leave what was behind. He had to become Ted Jacobs, whoever that was. He couldn't bear to be TJ Detweiler anymore. He couldn't be that monster. Even though for so many years he had bore that name with a sense of pride, now it just seemed like a dark storm cloud over his head. A curse, a doom even. He crossed his arms and huffed. He had to do something about this.

He knew that if Gus saw him he'd recognise him immediately. He'd be thrown into a cell for the rest of his life to prevent him from joining his older self. Or worse, executed. No, he couldn't have that. He had to keep this to himself. He once again had himself to hide from even those closest to him, he just hoped that unlike last time, there wouldn't be a time anyone found out.

He laid in the dark for a couple minutes, letting his thoughts organise themselves in an orderly train running through his head, which was beginning to spin less now that every thought was beginning to settle. He began to filter through his questions about the Tyrant. The answered ones included. Who is he? Him. What did he do? Ruin the world and the lives of the people in it. When did all this happen? Twenty years ago. Where is the Tyrant? Unknown. Why is he like this? Unknown. How did this happen? Unknown. It was those three unknowns that bothered him. Not knowing their answers just put him even more on edge than he was already. He decided to sleep on it. Worrying would do no good, and besides, he was Ted now. Not TJ, and not the Tyrant. Things would be okay. Well, as close to okay as possible.

TJ turned on his side and faced the wall. Despite the comfort of the bed he found it hard to fall asleep. John had Insomnia and was already asleep. Wait, the snoring had stopped. That either meant he was awake, or in a deeper sleep. He assumed the latter. He rolled over and looked at the clock. Using the glow of the writing on the walls, TJ was just barely able to make out the time. It was only a quarter after nine. Really? It felt like it should be midnight.

"Still awake?" TJ heard from below, making him jump.

"Unfortunately" he groaned.

John chuckled. "Tonight's a bad night for me. Usually I either have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. Tonight I've got both".

"Ugh, can't imagine what that's like"

"Believe me, you don't want to". Said John as he sat up in his bed.

"Whacha doing?" asked TJ, hearing his roommate pull off his sheets.

"I just thought o somethin'" said John. He got up and walked over to his desk on the opposite side of the room. He turned on the desk lamp, making TJ squint as his eyes tried to adjust to the change in light. John sat down at the chair and opened a drawer to his left. From which he took a book with untrimmed pages and a brown leather cover, and opened it to to where the thin leather bookmark was. He took a black pencil from the tray in front of him and began to write. TJ tried to see what the book was, but he was too far away. He took off his hat and left it on the bed, got up, climbed down the ladder, and walked over next to John, looking over his shoulder at what was written in the book. Silently he read...

I'm feeling every one of my darkest shades of blue  
The rain clouds contrast the mood with their dusty gray  
The canvas just gets wetter with each time I think of you

"What's this?" asked TJ.

"Lyrics" replied John. "They're the best ones I have. I've been working on this for about a year now, every so often an idea for the next line will pop into my head. I just wrote down the third line now, and I really want to finish the fourth tonight. I just can't think of anything".

"That's cool" said TJ. He was about to walk away and go back to bed when he heard John.

"You got any ideas?" he said.

TJ was about to reply that he didn't do song lyrics when he remembered what John had said about him being good with words. Maybe he was and he just didn't know it. He had fun with his vocab sentences, and his creativity had come in handy then. Maybe it was because he just never tried before he didn't do them. He decided to give it a shot. "Well," TJ said, thinking. "You talk about colors and a canvas, that makes me think about some kinda painting".

"That's a good point" said John, getting excited. "But I say that I'm cryin' onto the canvas, and that would screw the picture up".

"Wouldn't it wash it away?" TJ pointed out.

"Na," replied John. "Most paints would just smudge. Only watercolor would... that's it! Watercolor!"

"Huh?" asked TJ confused.

John began to write again. Once he was finished, TJ could see the lyrics now read...

I'm feeling every one of my darkest shades of blue  
The rain clouds contrast the mood with their dusty gray  
The canvas just gets wetter with each time I think of you  
And the watercolor painting that my tears will wash away

"Why would you be crying over a painting anyway?" asked TJ.

"Another good point" said John. "I'll just erase the word painting. I might be able to find a replacement word".

"Okay. So you talk about blue and gray. The thing that's blue and gray could be what's being washed away" said TJ, getting used to poetry. He had to hand it to Mikey. This stuff was hard.

"Well, besides paint, what's blue and gray, and can be washed away?" asked John.

"The sky's blue and has gray clouds" suggested TJ.

"The sky is BLUE?" asked John, shocked.

TJ became concerned. "It isn't now?" he asked.

"No! All there is is brown smog clouds. It's grody".

"BROWN?" exclaimed TJ.

"Yeah, brown".

TJ stood in shocked silence. He had assumed there would be smog clouds, but not enough to fill the whole sky. Like everything else, he reluctantly decided he'd just have to live with it. "Man" he said. "Well, at least I've got my memories".

"That's it! Memories!" John said excitedly as he scribbled in the word, and changed the line around a bit so that the poem now read...

I'm feeling every one of my darkest shades of blue  
The rain clouds contrast the mood with their dusty gray  
The canvas just gets wetter with each time I think of you  
And those watercolor memories my tears just wash away

"That's perfect!" Said John. "Hey I thought you said you were no good at song lyrics". TJ shrugged. "Well, let me be the first to tell you you were wrong".

"You think so?" asked TJ, amused. "I dunno, but if you say so". Said TJ.

"Yeah, I do"

"Really?"

"Yeah!" Said John putting everything away.

TJ took this into consideration for a bit before replying. "Then I might try my luck with writing a little something myself" he said.

"Knock yourself out" said John as he got up and wandered over to the bottom bunk. "There's paper in the top right drawer. While you do that, I'm gonna try to go to sleep again".

"Alright, you do that" said TJ, sitting in the desk chair and getting his supplies. After a bit of thought of what he would write about, he began to work, not caring if he didn't get any sleep that night. It wasn't his favorite thing in the world to do, but if he ever found Mikey in this time, he wanted to be able to show him this. With that motivation in mind he thought and wrote all through the night, and surprisingly, John did eventually get some sleep.

Bzzzzzzz! The buzzer rang out loudly and the lights automatically turned on. TJ opened his eyes, realising that he had fallen asleep on the desk. He lifted his head up, and discovered that the piece of lined paper he had been writing on last night had stuck itself to his left cheek. He yawned and peeled it off. He rubbed his tired eyes and read it to himself.

Throw the journal in the fire  
Let the pencil burn as well  
And the embers of my words float away

Let the person that I was and am  
Diminish in the flames  
Then I'll forget the fears of yesterday

-Ted Jacobs

TJ smiled. He liked it a lot. It even gave him chills. He found it hard to believe that he wrote it, but the fact that he... well, Ted Jacobs did, made him feel a little proud. He hear a rustle in the sheets behind him. Quickly, he folded the up the piece of paper, and put it into his pocket. He didn't want anyone besides himself to read this. It might give away the fact that he wasn't who he said he was.

"Four forty five already?" Groaned John, rolling over to look at the clock. "Dang it!" He rolled out of bed and fell to the floor. He stood up and brushed himself off. He began doing various stretches in preparation for the day ahead.

TJ hurriedly got up from the chair and went up to the bed, where he took his baseball cap and pocketed it, making sure John didn't see it. He walked away from the bed and watched John stretch. "So what do we do for these fifteen minutes before roll call?" asked TJ.

"Get yourself ready for the day" replied John. "Stretch, exercise, really wake yourself up ya know?"

"Okay. Hey, is there a bathroom in this place?" Asked TJ.

"Yeah, just turn right down the hall and it's the only white door".

"Right, thanks" said TJ , drowsily walking out the door and heading off toward the bathroom. He returned about two minutes later. "Jeez, there's not even a line. Does no one in this place have to go in the morning?" Asked TJ.

"Nah, it's just the other guys are too lazy to get out of bed when the buzzer rings" said John, making TJ chuckle.

About twelve more minutes passed and the buzzer rang again. The two boys were standing at in a line with all the other boys on the left side of the main hallway while the girls lined up on the right. They had left their room five minutes earlier to make it to roll call in time. Since the line up was alphabetical, John and TJ had been separated. John had to stand in between two boys that looked in their late teens, to his right was Trent Baker, and to his left, Jeremy Best. TJ had been sandwiched in between a tall guy named Matthew Isaacs, and an older looking guy named Lionel Jackson. Both of whom had looked more than a little intimidating. When the buzzer sounded, everyone stood up straight with their feet together, turned to the end of the hall, and saluted. TJ hurriedly followed suit. Not exactly understanding why, but doing it anyway. His answer came from the end of the hall in front of him.

A large, tall, muscular, tough looking man stepped into the hall and surveyed the sight in front of him. "At ease" he commanded. Everyone brought their arm back down to their side. TJ continued to do what everyone else did. He knew the man was Gus, he just couldn't get a good look. Everyone else was so tall. He didn't dare move from his position though, he didn't want to stand out. He heard Gus begin to call out the names of everyone in order as he (as the footsteps suggested) walked slowly down the hall. He heard John and Riki's names called out, both of whom responded with "Here". He also found out why John's sister went by the name Riki. It sure suited her better than Erica. As the general came closer, TJ began to think about what to say if he recognised him. Everything he thought of was lame. Thirteen defective plans later, he decided he wouldn't need it. He didn't have his hat, and it had been twenty long years since he had seen him like this. He'd be fine. He hoped.

"Austin Imhoff" called Gus. TJ was getting nervous. He was only two people ahead of him. "Tanya Inos". The last girl before him. One more boy and then him. "Matthew Isaacs". He was next. TJ was finally able to see the giant figure of his now twenty nine year old friend. He looked remarkably like his father, minus the glasses. He had gotten new ones. They were black and the frames were thinner. They fitted his face better than the old ones would have, even though they were huge on the nine year old Gus.

The general was about to read the next name off of his mental list when he noticed an extra boy. He stopped and turned to TJ, who gulped nervously.

"Well, It looks there's an extra boy in the line up. What's your name son?" He said with a warm, friendly expression.

'Jeez' thought TJ, 'he even sounds like his dad. "Ted Jacobs sir" he stammered, hoping that Gus didn't recognise him.

"Well Ted, come here. Let's introduce everybody to you". TJ did what he was told and stepped out of line toward the general. He stopped at his side and looked around. "Attention!" Commanded Gus, to respond to which, everybody turned to face him. "We have a new recruit. His name is Ted Jacobs, and I expect you all to treat him like you should treat every person in here. With respect".

"Yes sir" answered the children in the hall.

"Good" said Gus. He lowered his voice to talk to TJ. "If you have any conflict with people, bring it to me. I know it's not necessarily fun or easy being the new kid". He said. TJ smiled and nodded. "Now, you're the kid from the past right?" He asked. TJ nodded again. "Well then you're the worlds last hope of reverting back to it's original state. Uh, I mean..." he said, realising that this was a lot to place on a young kid who was probably already overwhelmed as it was. "We've got big plans for you Ted" he said, knowing it wasn't much better.

"I promise I won't disappoint sir" said TJ, looking up at his old friend.

"That's the spirit" said Gus, smiling down. "Alright. After roll call we'll have you sworn in okay? Just come to me and we'll get things ready".

"Yes sir!" said TJ confidently, trying not to sound too much like... well, himself. He went back into line and everyone got back into their positions, all facing the same way. He sighed in relief. He hadn't been figured out. That was great.

Gus continued to list off the names as he walked down the hall, but he wasn't paying that much attention to whether or not he heard a "here" in response. He was too busy thinking. He had seen this Ted Jacobs before, but where?


	10. Dawning

TJ listened as Gus continued to list off the names. After fifteen long minutes of hearing the names being called out and responses being hollered back, TJ was bored out of his mind. His legs were starting to feel uncomfortable after standing in that position for so long, and not being able to move. He started to bounce on his knees, but got a lot of stares so he stopped. He started to zone out of the whole place when...

"Hunter Wilson... Hunter Wilson!?..." TJ heard from the far end of the hall. He along with almost everyone else in the line up tried to suppress their laughter, not entirely successfully. There were now distant running footsteps running accompanied by the sound of panting coming down the hall. "Where the heck is Hunter!?"

A smaller looking boy ran frantically toward the hallway. While trying to turn into it, him momentum only carried him forward, making him slip sideways and land with a dull thud on the floor. The whole hallway turned backward to see what happened.

"And there the heck is Hunter" said Gus as he walked over to the tardy boy to help him up. "What are you all looking at? Get back in line!" ordered Gus to the lined audience. Everyone quickly did what they were told. He offered a hand down to Hunter, who took it and half heaved himself up off of the ground. "Now you get why I don't want people running in this concrete death trap?" asked Gus. Hunter nodded looking up at his general with a smile. He brushed himself off and got into line. "Jake, you've got to set a good example for you're brother here, get him and yourself back in line" said Gus, walking to the next person in line. "He's almost always tardy, and you being lazy mannered isn't helping him". Closer to the front end of the boy's line, John giggled. If you had to label anyone in the resistance as the couch potato, it'd be Jake Wilson.

"Yes sir" growled Jake, glaring at his younger brother for giving him more responsibility.

"Alright, it seems everyone is here and accounted for, let's get started with the swearing ceremony. Ted, come up here!" said Gus turning back to the occupants of the hallway, and walk ing back toward the front end of the line up. TJ did what he was told. He stepped out of line and slowly followed the general up, taking in all of the sideways glances with discomfort. They reminded him of two days ago. Well, twenty years ago. He reached the end of the hallway and stood beside Gus, looking up at the general to find out what would happen next. Gus took a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it carefully. "This is the vow sheet Ted" said Gus, handing the sheet of paper to the boy next to him. "And you might want to read the rules first" he said, poi ting to the wall where there was a sheet of paper stuck to it. TJ read each one, and agreed that they were fair. "Every single person you see in this hall has sworn by the vow sheet" continued Gus. "If you wish to join the resistance, you must swear by the words written on this sheet".

TJ smiled and read the handwriting. He knew it could have only been made by Gus. "I do sir. Very much" said TJ, looking up at Gus.

"Well don't just tell me, tell them too" he said, gesturing out to the two lines of children, who were all looking at him attentively.

TJ took a step forward and took a deep breath to help calm his nerves. He put his right hand over his heart and held the vow in his left hand, so he could read it aloud to the people in the hallway. "I, Ted Jacobs," he began "do solemnly swear, that I will stop at nothing to help bring the rule of Theodore J. Detweiler to an end" said TJ, a little awkwardly. "Reverting the world to it's former state, to maintain my position as a part of the United States Resistance until death, unless sooner discharged, and to abide by all rules of the resistance as a part of it".

"You understand that any infraction of the rules will result in immediate revocation from the United States Resistance?" Asked Gus.

"Yes sir, I do" replied TJ, looking back.

Gus smiled. "Well then, Ted Jacobs, welcome to the resistance!". A huge cheer erupted in the hall. Most of which TJ knew was completely fake. "Ted, come with me, we'll get you put into the system. Every one else is dismissed. Have a good breakfast!" said Gus walking down the hall, TJ following behind. He looked back and saw John slowly shuffling into the cafeteria, almost getting lost in the mob of people headed through the double doors. He was looking at him and smiling. He gave him another thumbs up, to which he responded with a thumbs up and subtle smile of his own. He then turned back and continued down the hallway and looked around. It was the next hallway down from the west wing.

"So, is this the east wing?" asked TJ curiously.

"No, the girls rooms are in the east wing" said Gus. This is the north wing, where all my rooms and the com center is. The wing behind us is the south wing, where all of the recreational rooms are".

"Recreational rooms?" Asked TJ, surprised. "Wow. First I find there's hundreds of these secret underground forts all over the world, next I find you've got recreational rooms. Some laid back resistance".

"Well, we spend a lot of time here. When me and the older kids are planning out our strategies, the others aren't doing anything, and operations tend not to occur very often, so kids are left bored out of their minds. Even with six hours of training every morning".

"Jeez" remarked TJ, walking a couple feet behind his old friend.

"I know" said Gus, slowing his pace and walking up to a black door on the left and sliding his room card in the slot and waiting for the telltale click of the door unlocking. He opened the large black metal door and used his heel to keep it open, inviting TJ to come in the room first. TJ entered a large un furnished room with a desk and an entire wall of filing cabinets. He stood at the center of the room. Gus walked past him and sat in a swivel chair behind the desk. He opened a number of drawers and pulled out an ink pad, a pen, and a sheet of paper, and slid them toward TJ. "Here I've got a form for you to fill out, the ink pad is for your fingerprint. We scan it into the computers so that the fingerprint scanners will let you in when you use them".

"Okay," said TJ as he walked up to the desk, picked up the pen and began to fill out the form. "So if you've got fingerprint access if you've got these cards?" He asked.

"A card's easy to lose. Our most important rooms we have fingerprint access to" explained Gus.

"Alright", said TJ, finishing his name and moving on to his birthday, May sixth nineteen eighty eight, age, 9, gender, male, height, four feet two inches, weight... why'd they need to know that? He filled it in anyway. 76 lbs. Room, 34, West wing. He then looked below this line to find two boxes with text over the top lines saying "thumb prints here". He rolled his right thumb in the cold black ink and then rolled it in the right box, and repeated the process with his left thumb in the other box.

"Here" said gus, pulling a tissue from the box on his desk and handing it to TJ.  
"Thanks" said TJ, taking the tissue and rubbing his thumbs, getting the majority of the ink off. He looked around for a trash bin.

"I've got one down here" said Gus, pointing to under his desk as he took the tissue from the boy. As he brought his hand back up, he accidentally hit a picture on his desktop, sending it flying through the air. He gasped. TJ gasped too and lunged to a spot on the floor where he knew the picture would land. Gus stood up to see over the edge of his desk so he could see if Ted was okay (he did just dive onto a concrete floor), and sighed with relief as he realised that both the boy and his treasured picture were safe.

"What's this?" Asked TJ, he fell silent when he looked at the picture and realised with a pang of homesickness what it was. It was the gang. All six of them together the summer after third grade. It was the picture his mom had taken when the friends had decided to go to the pond to skip rocks. After an hour they had taken a break from rock skipping and sat under a low tree, and drank lemonade. This is what the picture was of. Just the six of them, chilling out in the shade on a hot day with their ice cold glasses of lemonade, smiling. He couldn't help but smile himself as he saw all of his companions together, like he knew they never would be again. He slowly walked back over to Gus's desk and set it back up.

"That's a very old picture" said Gus. "This is of me and my old friends before... before things happened". TJ was beginning to worry. What had happened to the others? Surely they all had to be here in this time too. Were they alright? Were they still alive even... No. That didn't bear thinking about.

"Looks like you had some great friends" remarked TJ, hoping that even with there being a picture of himself right in front of him, Gus wouldn't recognise him. But another part of him hoped his friend wasn't that stupid.

"Yeah. I did" said Gus, picking up the picture and holding the last fragment of his happy childhood in his hands. "But, that was all in the past. This is now" said Gus, snapping out of his nostalgia and putting the picture back down on his desk and adjusting it to just the right angle. "I'll take this" he said, sliding the filled out form over to himself to scan some things into the computer system, and as he looked at the handwriting, he realised he knew this penmanship. It belonged to one of his old friends. He blew this off as just seeing things through nostalgia. He really needed to forget about the past... No. He couldn't do that. Then he'd lose his motivation to lead this organization. He woke up his computer by shaking the mouse, and began to code in the information. All of which seemed familiar somehow. The as he began to analyse the information he had typed into the computer, he realised something. He frowned and brought up another profile labeled Theodore Jasper Detweiler. TJ noticed this and internally began to panic. He knew. He KNEW! Gus wasn't surprised to find that the birth dates matched and the rough physical description was pretty much identical. He looked at the boy's name and something popped out to him. The initials. Ted's initials were T.J.. No. It couldn't be. His jaw dropped and he turned and compared his old friend's face in the picture, to that of Ted's. He stood up and walked out from behind his desk and over to TJ, looking straight down into the boy's eyes. They were the same. He frowned. "By any chance, is Ted Jacobs an ALIAS?"

WHOMP! "Um, uh n-no sir, why would you think that?" said TJ, with a waver in his tone that gave away the fact that he was lying.

Gus squinted his eyes. "TJ?" He asked suspiciously.

INFINITE WHOMP! TJ froze with fear and after a short pause, slowly nodded, looking down, not wanting to see the look on his old friend's face. He saw the generals shoes step closer to him and he closed his eyes. This was it. The end of him. He was going to be locked away, or beat to death by a person who's life was ruined because of him. His old friend Gus Griswald.

He was taken by complete surprise when he found himself in a tight hug, being half squeezed to death. He could hear Gus half laughing and half crying. "Oh, TJ!" He was saying over and over. He opened his eyes and saw that Gus seemed... overjoyed at the prospect of being in the same room with the person who ruined the lives of nearly everyone on earth, and it was kind of weird to see the Gus he knew and loved in the body of who looked like his dad. He began to nervously laugh along with the general. " hahaha ha ha wha?" He asked, confused. And then let out a quick yelp of pain as he felt Gus's grip tighten.

"What? Oh! Sorry. Even after years I'm not used to being this strong" he said, letting the boy go.

"You're not going to lock me away?" asked TJ, dumbfounded.

'WHAT? Why?" Said Gus, suddenly becoming serious.

TJ began to tear up as well, bu not for the same reason. "Because of what I did to billions of people world wide! Because of what I did to the planet! Because of everything I did to YOU! Because I'm the Tyrant!" He said hysterically.

"No" said Gus. "YOU are not the Tyrant. YOU did none of those things. You did nothing to me. It's HIM" he said, pointing to the computer screen at the picture of the older man. "He's not you. He doesn't have the... TJ, where's your cap?" Asked Gus. TJ, still dumbfounded, jaw dropped, eyes wide, and staring straight ahead pulled out his red baseball cap from his back pocket and meekly placed it on his head. Gus sighed with relief. "Well, as I was saying, he doesn't have that cap, he has this one" He said, pointing to TJ's old maroon hat. TJ gasped. The personality in his maroon cap on the picture of the Tyrant's head. It was him who had done all of this. It all made sense now. In this time, he had succeeded in switching hats. He had become a monster because of that. But he hadn't succeeded in his because of the time vortex that would only have appeared if he had become the tyrant in this time. So it was terrible that in this time he had become the Tyrant, but if he hadn't, he wouldn't have been spared from the same fate. He was confused. Very confused.

"But... but" was all he could manage to squeak out.

"C'mon. I haven't talked to any of my best friends for years and in five thousand eight hundred and forty days all I get is bu... bu...?" Gus joked.

TJ managed a faint smile, but inside, a tornado was blowing through. A bad one.

"But I still know I'm capable of evil" said TJ, losing the smile again, in fact, starting to sound a little angry. "And I don't know if I can live with that".

"TJ..." Gus was trying to say, but was cut off.

"Stop calling me that!" said TJ in a more than upset tone. "That's... HIS name" he said, pointing to the computer screen. "And I want as LITTLE TO DO WITH HIM AS POSSIBLE" he said.

"You already do. His name is Theodore J. Yours is TJ. Call HIM TJ and he goes ape on you. He only accepts Theodore, and Mr. Detweiler" explained Gus. "You aren't anything like him. You aren't even the same person. The hats remember? Just like you told me in fourth grade. The hats make you who you are. You aren't in control of that".

"Still. Physically he's the same person. That's enough to make me want to kill myself!"

"DON'T!" screamed Gus, making TJ jump and look up at him. "I'm sorry, it's just, I've lost everything, and now that you're here... I can't lose you too. Not again".

It took a couple minutes for anyone to speak again. TJ was still going over the fact that maybe he wasn't as bad as he had convinced himself he was. Maybe he was okay. Gus sure seemed to think so, and it seemed his old friend wanted him to think so too. Gus just hoped that what TJ chose to do didn't hurt either if them.

"Alright, just don't call me TJ in front of the other kids. I won't live two seconds if they find out" said TJ grimly. "They won't get the thing with the hats y'know?"

"Yeah," said Gus. "To be honest I never really didn't understand it until you switched the hats. Then it all started to click. I remember only me and Mikey understood it, so about fifteen years back, before the memory wiping ray... you know about the ray right?" TJ nodded slowly. "Alright. So, it was only the two of us out of the entire gang that didn't want..." Gus trailed off and looked down.

"To kill me" TJ finished. Gus said nothing and continued to stare at the concrete floor. "Just say it. They wanted to kill me". Gus still remained motionless. "I don't blame them. Not after what he did to them. And speaking of them, where are they? How are they now?" asked TJ. Gus looked up with a look on his face which promised something terrible."Gus? What happened to Spinelli, Vince, Gretchen, and Mikey?"

"Nothing"

"TELL ME!" screamed TJ screamed desperately.

"You'll find out soon enough".

"GUS!"

"No TJ" said Gus. "It's best you don"t know right now".

TJ knew whatever it was had to be terrible. Once again. If Gus didn't say something, it was for good reason. He believed them to be dead. Killed by the Tyrant himself because they rebelled. That wouldn't surprise him. How could he? "I... He killed them didn't he?"

"No" said Gus. "No he didn't". TJ sighed with relief. "But what he did do wouldn't be any better". Oh no.

"You're still not telling me?" Asked TJ. Gus shook his hanging head.

TJ became angry "Why? Why not? They're MY friends too, I have the right to know!"

"I know you do, but if you did..." Gus trailed off.

"I'd be worse off knowing there's nothing I can do?" guessed TJ. Gus looked up sadly and nodded.

"But uh, let's not talk about this right now okay" said Gus as he sat back down at his desk and pressing the enter key on his computer. As he did, a printer next to him began to crank out papers, and a laminated card from the top. He took the card and put it on his desk. He bent down to a bottom drawer behind his desk and pulled out a manila folder. He took the papers off of the tray on the printer and carefully slid them inside. On the label tag, he wrote Ted Jacobs. He got up and went over to the wall of filing cabinets. He opened one of them, inserted the folder into the front, and closed it. "You're enlisted as Ted Jacobs and that's what it says on your card". TJ took the card off of Gus's desk and looked at it.

"Tender" he said half heartedly, caring more about his friends'... situation than an official ID card. He pocketed it and stared somewhat angrily at Gus. He knew it was for his own good, but still. He hadn't told him what had happened to his friends.

"Hey, look at it this way. You've still got your childhood. Everyone else's was taken away from them a long time ago" said Gus, walking over to a giant black box in the other corner of the room, and beckoned TJ over. Gus opened the box. And TJ peered inside. There were a bunch of the black sticks that he had seen used last night.

"Gus, I don't have any control over anything, and from what I've heard about my future self, I won't any time soon" he said, realising what Gus wanted him to do.

"No, it's possible you might later on. Like I said, you're not him, and you have to be the one chose your sticks, I can't do it for you. You need to be the first one to touch them or they won't orientate themselves to your DNA".

"Oh, okay" said TJ, reaching for two sticks. As he did so, he felt them beginning to heat up, and start to glow a bright electric blue. He gasped and felt as they started they started vibrating and a humming sound began, increasing in pitch and velocity, and the blue glow, becoming more defined. After about ten seconds it all calmed down and a transparent, rubber like substance had secreted from the thin black sticks and formed a cylindrical five inch long handles on the end of each wand. "Oh, I thought they'd be dark blue, like John's" he said.

"No. The handles are colored to represent the element you have control over. John's are blue because he's aquadominant. Pyrodominants have red handles, aerodominants have yellow handles, and teradominants have green handles. Since you can't control yet, your's are transparent" Gus explained.

"What about omnidominants?" Asked TJ. "What color are the handles for them?"

"White" said Gus.

"Oh" said TJ.

"Well, I'd better let you go back to breakfast, you'll need it" said Gus, "you've got six hours of training ahead of you".

"Jeez, six hours every day's a little excessive don't you think?" asked TJ.

"Nope" said Gus smiling

"Whatever" said TJ, walking toward the door. "And later, I want to know what happened to our friends". He said, opening the door, about to leave.

"Later" said Gus. "And it's nice to talk to you after twenty years Teej" and then realising the door was open, "Oh! I mean uh, Ted".

"Yeah, nice talking to you to" said TJ in a low tone, not doing as much as looking at the general as he slipped out the doorway, leaving Gus to wonder if it really was best to keep the the information of the others from his old friend.

As TJ walked alone down the long north wing, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his ID card. He looked at it. Everything seemed to be in order. The alias, Ted Jacobs, was printed in the top right corner of the card. The other information was listed below it. He sighed, and stuffed it back into his pocket. Now that that was taken care of, he could use all of his brain to focus on the other thought. His friends. Where were they? How were they? Both of these questions had been risen and rejected by Gus, which he hated. If he was going to induce questions, he might as well answer them, not just leave him hanging. He frowned. Why was he letting himself be bossed around by a grown up? Was it simply because he was Gus, his old friend? Why was he letting that stop him. He needed to know! And one thing was certain, he was sure gonna find out, and he was willing to do whatever it took.


	11. Training

I'm sorry for not updating in so long. I hate school. This chapter is longer I promise, but it's a lot of filler. It's hard for me to write filler because I start to get bored. Warning! There are thirty someodd boys in the resistance and I don't know how many girls. By the end of this story you will know them all! Also, I'm planning a Recess/Digimon crossover!

* * *

TJ pulled open the big black double doors to the cafeteria and an amazing scent wafted over him. He took a deep breath and managed a smile. He never thought that cafeteria food could smell this good. He snapped back into reality when the doors, which were in no way light, closed on him. He let out a quiet yelp, half in surprise and half in pain, and shoved them open again so he could get to his destination. The seat next to John. He walked over to the corner of the cafeteria and smiled. "Smells great in here" he remarked, sitting down next to his roommate, who he could start to consider a friend.

"Yeah" said John, "That's cuz Mike's on chef duty".

"Who Mike again? Don't remember from roll call" said TJ.

"Look for yourself" said John, pointing through an open space between the cafeteria and the kitchens. Looking through which, TJ could see a number of people, some boys and some girls, scrambling around the crowded and busy looking room.

"Which one's Mike?" Asked TJ, wondering why John was being so non specific.

"Who looks like they're in charge?" Asked John looking at TJ, who was observing what he could see of the inside of the kitchens. It was chaos, but there was one person that seemed to work quite smoothly around it. He was a big guy, almost reminded him of Mikey, but the face was entirely different. He had had a head shave recently, he had multiple tattoos on his left arm and a lip ring to add to it all.

"The fat guy that looks like he could crack a guys scull open with one hand?" Guessed TJ.

"Yep" said John. "That's Mike. He seems like a real tough guy but put him in a kitchen and that's when you see his eyes light up and his passion come out. That's his way of release I guess. Cooking. And he's dang good at it".

"Release?" Asked TJ.

"Yeah, release" John answered. "It's something that never fails to make you feel happy and forget about the world for a while. Like for me, it's music. For Matty over there it's kicking back and reading comic books. For Monte in that crowd, it's playing basketball"

"I don't remember a Monte from roll call" pointed out TJ.

"His first name's Tyler, but like a lot o the others in here, he goes by just his last name" Explained John.

"Alright," said TJ. "Now if this Mike guy's so good, why aren't you in line?" He asked.

"I'll get up there, but I normally wait. It get's pretty rough up there with everyone competing to get their food. Especially if Mike's the chef. You haven't eaten since you got here, you must be starving!" Said John.

As if to answer, TJ's stomach let out a growl loud enough that he could feel it. "Yeah, now that I'm smelling bacon I am". He looked up at the line of people still waiting for their food. It seemed calm enough, he decided to risk going up there while there was still a line. He was hungry enough to bypass the "don't do it" in his head. He stood up and began to walk toward the end of the line.

"Woah, Ted what'ya think you're doin?" John said, standing up.

"Going to get myself some food" said TJ, still walking toward the end of the line, his mouth beginning to water. "Look, it's calm, and Riki's up there. How bad can it be?"

"Riki knows how to fight, and she's not the only person up there worth keeping an eye on" said John, gesturing toward the line.

TJ stopped. He turned toward the line, and saw Terry standing two people in front of Riki. Even after what happened yesterday he still wasn't afraid of him, but had to agree with John. Maybe it was safest just to wait. Terry seemed so unreasonably bipolar, and he'd rather not be around him when he went off. "Alright, fine" said TJ, turning back, trying to ignore his stomach.

"Good idea" said John sitting back down and dragging his fingers across his hair to get it out of his face and tucking it behind his ear. He didn't want to be one eye blind in here.

"Woah! You have a left eye?" Laughed TJ.

"Oh, shut up. Riki says that all the time"

"And you've got ears!" TJ continued to joke.

"that too. Stop it, you're turning into her"

"Hey, I thought you two got along?"

"We do, but I can't stand her sometimes, especially when sh-"

"You'd better shut up she's coming over!" TJ said, dashing over to his seat and sitting down.

Riki was coming over, carrying a brown lunch tray. Whatever was in it was steaming, and it looked so good. "Hey boys- woah! You have a left eye?"

"What'd I tell ya?" whispered John.

"Word for froopin word"

"Froopin?"

"Hey," said Riki, sitting down to her brother's right, "Is there something you'd like to tell me?"

"Uh, no" started John "it's just you're very, um...".

"Red... today" TJ finished, smiling at Riki, John following suit. And she was. She was adorned from head to toe in red, wearing a red T-shirt (which was a couple sizes too big for her) with a large dark red capital R in the middle. Her windpants were also red as well as her hair elastics and shoelaces.

"Yeah, and I was planning to ditch the pigtails and wear a headband or bandana but I couldn't find either. The line's empty John". Said Riki, taking her first strip of bacon and biting into it with a crunch.

"Oh, thanks sis. Coming Ted?" Asked John, standing up and squeezing between Riki's seat and the wall. TJ did the same.

"Oh yeah!" Said Riki, smiling up at him. "I finally found out your name this morning, welcome to the resistance Ted"

Still getting used to being refered to as Ted, TJ smiled and nodded as he followed John up to get his breakfast. He took a brown plastic tray, a fork, and a knife from a low table against the wall. Upon picking the tray up, he recognised it, but just to make sure, he flipped it over. He smiled as he read 'PROPERTY OF THIRD STREET SCHOOL'. He knew the trays had looked familiar, and now he knew why. He flipped the flat sheet of plastic back over again and quickly walked toward the large window between the kitchens and the cafeteria, where John was being served. After his lunch tray was filled, John stepped out of line and waited for TJ to get his food. TJ's mouth began to water when he saw a large bacon and cheese omelet, three strips of bacon and a hash brown drop onto his tray. He took a deep breath through his nose, and followed John as he turned and went back to his seat. After TJ squeezed past Riki and her brother, who had just sat down and had taken a bite of his omelet. TJ didn't even wait to sit before he took a bite out of his first strip of bacon.

"Yes!" Said Riki, "finally another kid who goes for the bacon first!". She held up a hand behind John's head to high five TJ, which he did, smiling. "I don't know what's up with my brother, he never eats the bacon first" continued Riki.

"Hey," defended John "I like to save the best for last. You guys don't want the bacon to be the last thing you taste, that's your funeral".

"You suck the fun outta everything!" Laughed Riki, starting on her third strip of bacon.

"I'm three years older than you, I'm gonna be more mature, that's the way life works." Said John, taking another bite of his omelet.

"Oh yeah, I almost forgot you were two years older than me" said TJ, looking over at John. "You really don't look or even act much more grown up a lot of the time".

"I'm not that much older. Does that ever happen to you?" Asked John.

"What happen?" asked TJ back.

"When you're younger you look up at the eleven year olds and they seem so much older, they're the big kids, and then you become one and you realise, you're still not very big, and there's not much difference at all". There was a moment of silence while everyone at the table thought about this.

"Nope" decided TJ, returning his focus to his breakfast.

"Me neither" said Riki, doing the same.

"You will" smiled John. "Just you wait".

Once the three of them were finished, they brought their trays back up to the window to be washed, and John and Riki led TJ out the doors and through the halls to the gym where training would take place.

"The others are waiting," observed TJ, "shouldn't we wait too?"

"Nah" said Riki. "If we get to the gym now we can start training as soon as the buzzer sounds, unlike them, who have to walk all the way down, then get ready and then finally start training. Plus we get away from that... pandemonium for a bit".

"Pandemonium is right" laughed John.

"And Riki," said TJ, "John said you weren't a part of the resistance. Why are you coming to training?".

"It keeps me busy during the day" replied Riki. "And ready to take down anyone who tries anything".

The three of them turned the corner into the south wing. TJ looked through the glass on every door he passed. He remembered this was the wing with all the cool stuff. He passed the arcade first, then the sports courts, then what appeared to be a library, the shelves filled with comic books. There were more rooms but TJ couldn't make out what was in them because the lights had been turned out. John and Riki came to a stop at the end of the hallway where there was another big black door labeled 'GYM'. He watched as his roommate took his card from his pocket and pushed it into the slot, the light above which switched from red to green, signifying that the door had unlocked. John pushed the door open and, followed by his sister, stepped into the room. TJ slipped behind them and raised his eyebrows. So much equipment. There was what appeared to be a giant obstacle course in the center of the giant room. Up the wall behind it was a rock wall, harnesses and ropes at it's base. In the far left corner was a jumble of exercise equipment. The far right corner hosted mats TJ assumed were for push ups and sit ups.

"Alright here's how it works Ted" John began to explain. "There're three hours of physical training in here..."

"Oh, heck no!" Interrupted TJ.

"Oh, heck yeah, gotta get used to that" laughed John. "And after that the are three hours of control training".

"How am I supposed to do control training?" asked TJ. "I can't move anything".

"You'll have to learn all of the element's forms and stuff. It's best to do that" informed Riki. "And since there aren't coaches, you'll have to learn from the others."

"Who specifically?" asked TJ, still not getting all of the information he needed.

"I can teach'ya water" said John, "Who's the best at air?"

"Christopher?" Guessed Riki.

"Yeah!" Agreed John enthusiastically. "Chris Ayer, oh he's good. You've gotta learn from him Ted. Also he's actually not too bad a person".

"Connor's a real good terra" suggested Riki.

"Yeah, Lynchy's awesome at controlling but I don't know how good of a teacher he is" Said John. "It'd be great if he agreed though."

"Wait," interrupted TJ, "You're having Connor Lynch teach me earth? That tough looking guy?"

"Aren't most of the people in here tough looking?" Riki pointed out.

"True, so who's your best pyro?" Wondered TJ out loud. The conversation came to a standstill and Riki and John looked at each other with a grim expression on their faces. "What?" asked TJ, once again not sure he really wanted to know the answer.

"You sure you want the strongest pyro to teach you Ted?" Asked Riki.

"Well the best is the best" said TJ, and a few weird looks later, "But I'm taking that it's not in this case".

"It's Terry" said John.

"Who's second best?" asked TJ quickly, immediately averting from the subject of Terry.

"Let's not focus on that right now" said Riki. "It's really hard to learn all the dominants at once. You've got to take it slowly, one at a time. It took me two years and I've only finished water and earth..."

"Wait what?" Interrupted John. "Who'd you learn from? Conner doesn't even talk to girls. Ever"

"Mckayla Marley" said Riki. "I learned ok, but she really was a b...ad teacher".

"Jeez Riks, eight years old and already trying to suppress that language" said John shaking his head.

BZZZZZZZZ! The buzzer rang around the cavernous space and echoed of the wall what seemed like several hundred times before the gym's three occupants could hear silence again.

"Well, time to start" said John jogging over to where the obstacle course began, closely followed by his sister who both used a horizontal bar to swing themselves up to a higher platform and continued on the money bars that followed.

"How do you do this?" Asked TJ, walking over to the horizontal bar as some obstacles in the wild course began to move. "I'm not strong enough to hoist myself up there!"

"Just work at it" called Riki, leaping off of the last wrung on the monkey bars and continuing the course behind some obstacles and out of sight. This didn't help TJ in the slightest. He sighed and skipped the bar, hoping to get his fingers over the ledge and pull himself up that way, but he was too short. It looked like he was going to have to use the bar after all. He walked back, reached both of his hands up and gripped the bar above him. He pulled himself up and tried to swing himself back and forth, thinking it would give him enough momentum to launch himself onto the platform. He thought he was going to make it when his hands got too sweaty and slipped. TJ landed on his back. Luckily, Gus had thought to have mats installed in the floor below the whole course.

"If you can't make it you can use the ladder!" called John from somewhere in the obstacle course, still out of sight.

"That's just great to know I could've used a ladder this whole time!" shouted TJ yelled into the jumble of awkward structures.

"If I told you, you never would've even tried" the voice called back. TJ walked back under the bar and to the side of the platform where there was a ladder.

The doors to the gym opened and in walked Terry with a few others boys behind him. TJ looked over his shoulder and noticed the older boys and his urgency to get up onto the platform increased. If he was seen taking the shortcut, he'd never get any respect, which he had now begun to feel the need for. Too late. Terry walked directly over to him, a smug grin on his face.

"Well look at our newest family member, Ted Jacobs" he said.

"I want no part in any family of yours" retorted TJ finally getting up onto the platform, and as an after thought "...and if your little posy had any sense they wouldn't either" he said looking down on the older boys below.

The lower elevated group ignored the (what otherwise would have been very provocative of a fight) words coming from the younger boys mouth and Terry continued as if nothing had been said. "Using the ladder I see" he grinned. "You can stand up to me and keep your head held high as I'm about to nail you in the face, but for the easiest thing on here you need the... let's call it, the Jacobs ladder" he laughed at his own joke.

"Jacobs ladder led to heaven" pointed out TJ with an annoying smirk, running up the steep, narrow steps to the next obstacle. The monkey bars. What joy. TJ hated monkey bars with a burning passion, and they seemed to hate his hands with a burning passion. The last time he had tried the monkey bars, he had had blisters on his palms and fingers for weeks. And he could never swing himself to the next bar. He decided he'd just have to go with it. As he took a deep breath and closed his eyes, he felt a strong shove on his back, propelling him forward, and off of the platform. TJ gasped and flailed his arms, which just happened to be in front of him at the moment he fell onto the blue mat below. He rolled over and sat up, glaring angrily at the culprit. As he suspected, there was Terry, with a smug smile on his face a laughing group of other boys behind him.

"Hey, what gives?" TJ yelled up at the bully, beginning to understand how Gus must have felt in school, and not liking it one bit.

"Better speed up Jacobs, cuz every time you're in my way I'm just gonna plow through you" Terry yelled back, quickly swinging from one bar to another and to the other side in seconds, his friends not far behind.

TJ got up and huffed. What a jerk that kid was. He didn't know what it was that made him so popular, or so full of himself. He walked over to the next ladder and got back up onto the next platform. He nearly got sick. How was he supposed do do this! The obstacle looked impossible. The circular floor was made up of twelve ring shaped floor panels, all spinning opposite directions, and every few seconds changing speed, which way they were spinning, height, and even angle. On them were five foot cylinders, at least a foot in diameter. He guessed he'd have to weave his way through the maze of moving cylinders without getting crushed. As he was about to skip this obstacle, he felt a hand oh his shoulder. He jumped and wheeled around. It was John, and he could see Riki on the monkey bars. "Oh, it's you" TJ said with relief. He had expected another tough looking kid out to get him. "Jeez, why can't I hear anyone coming in this thing? And how did you..."

"It's my second circulation. Um, need help on this one?".

"Yes please!".

"Yeah, this one's more geared toward the aqua and aerodominants." explained John. "And yeah, as you're probably thinking, you've gotta flow through the pole thingies and get to the other side."

"How?" stammered TJ.

"Like this." said John leaping into the chaos and gently flowing through the obstacle. Left, right, up, down, John was weaving through the cylinders with ease, unlike TJ, who tried getting on and quickly got off again. Riki passed TJ and hopped into the jumble of cylinders and like her brother, weaved through the obstacle with ease. "Just try it, that's all you have to do!" shouted John over the noise of the mechanisms under the machine.

"Can't I just ride the outside ring around to the platform on the other side?" Asked TJ trying to find an alternative route to point B.

"If you want I guess, but then you don't get the challenge" said John, on the platform on the other side with his hands in his pockets, done with the obstacle and waiting. And that's just what TJ did. He hopped onto the out most ring and rode around the circle. He jumped off next to John and stabilized himself before continuing on behind his roommate. TJ was now determined to not take any shortcuts throughout the course. No cutting corners, and no ladders. That was of course until he got to the next obstacle. He had walked into a small area and wondered why the floor had so many hole. His question had been answered by a violent plume of flame erupting from the floor. 'Oh, forget this!' He had thought as he made his way toward the ladder.

The rest of physical training went much the same way. More and more people began to cram onto the obstacle course, all of which were comfortable with it obviously, as they were running circuits through it in under a minute, just as John and Riki had done. TJ had eventually decided to move on to the the less crowded and easier activities, such as the sit up and push up mats, and the weight lifting area (where he somehow managed to squash his toe). This became boring and he resorted to hanging around the walls, pacing, thinking about home and what he was going to do now that he was stuck here.

These thoughts pulled TJ through the otherwise dragging hours of physical training. They were brought to an abrupt end by the buzzer, signaling the end of physical training and the beginning of control training. John found TJ standing against the wall, looking sadly on at the many people (not everyone was a kid) scrambling to get all off the mats on shelves in the corner of the room. The terradominants were busy lowering the obstacle course below the floor, and sliding a huge slab of concrete across the top of it. Eventually he couldn't even look at this. The strange setting, unfamiliar people, and erie mood combined could only remind him that he was so terribly far from home. He turned around and leaned his forehead against the concrete wall, frowning, trying to come to terms with the fact that he couldn't ever go back.

"You alright Ted?" asked John, walking over to TJ, and standing behind him.

"Yeah, yeah I'm just... thinking" came the muffled reply.

"You think a lot?"

"Non until Yesterday"

"It's good to think every now n' then. C'mon, time to learn some controli..."

"Hey becket!" A voice interrupted, calling from across the gym. John spun around and to his dismay, there was Terry, walking over to him.

"Mind If I join you" asked John.

"Sure, try not to..." John walked over and let his head ram into the wall. "...hurt yourself".

"You know, after a couple years you get used to it"

"Good to know"

"Becket!" Terry called out again, only this time he didn't need to. He was right behind the two boys with their heads against the wall.

"Regular or double duty?" Asked John. TJ stood up and frowned over at the long haired boy beside him. Had he not learned from yesterday? He had to stand up for himself!

"Actually, as tempting as double duty sounds I'm not out to bash you through the wall this time" replied a smug faced Terry.

"Good, cuz I wasn't gonna take it today" John semi yelled back, eyes closed, frowning.

"What I want," continued Terry, "Is a duel. You against me". John slowly picked his head up from the wall, his expression revealing his deep contemplation. This is the one thing that he had been dodging since he had got here, but he knew that after what he did last night, he'd never be left alone unless he dueled. From across the gym, Riki spotted the action and ran to be a part of it. If a situation involved her brother, it involved her as well. She got over just in time to see her older sibling turn around and say the words, "I accept".

A cacophony of laughter filled the gym and a sly smile spread across John's face. Only he knew that they all were about to get the surprise of their lives.

The gym underwent one more transformation before it was ready for the duel. The terradominants pushed down the floor on both sides of the giant room, forming two trenches. Pushing down the floor revealed the ends of pipes, filling the trenches with water. The floor was already rock, the air was unpleasantly musty, but it was all too undeniably there, providing the oxygen that fire needed to burn. Everything was ready.

John got to one end of the gym and Terry to the other. Both drew their control wands, and both felt confident that they would win, but little did one of them know, they were very wrong. In the seconds before the duel, Terry was busy warming up, punching the air and sending out jets of roaring yellow orange flame. TJ didn't quite know what John was doing. He was looking down, his bangs covering most of his face. All TJ could see was the tip of his nose and down, he was grinning slightly, he didn't know why. The audience that TJ was crammed into was counting down and had reached three, two, and finally one.

No one knew what happened. Terry had instantly sent a blast of fire at his opponent and John with closed eyes, had raised his arms which pulled up a dense fog from the floor making it impossible to see, but more importantly, impossible for any of Terry's blasts to last for more than a flickering instant. Everyone heard the brief roars as he tried frantically to ignite any sort of flame, and failing miserably to do so, and then they heard a giant crack, as a giant blob of water slapped him in the face. They also heard the sound of him being knocked to the ground, screaming all the way. Outraged that John Becket, that tiny little pathetic squirt was winning.

"Stop hiding and face me, coward!" screamed Terry.

John knew he had to, and even he had to admit, this was just plain boring. He condensed the mist he had created. It rained down into the trenches and onto the occupants of the gym, soaking them to the skin. As soon as he did, an orange fireball sent from Terry, who had only just spotted him. John gasped sharply before pointing his wands at the ground to his right, and swinging his arms over his head, pulling a large arch of water in front of him, intercepting the fireball with a hiss and cloud of steam. Angrier still, Terry sent a barrage of fireballs in John's direction. John sent three large blobs of water to stop the incoming in their tracks. They curve balled through the air and extinguished Terry's attack. Terry sent multiple waves of flame along the floor which John nimbly jumped over without difficulty. Terry was furious. No, beyond furious, he was going mad with anger. He punched out jets, he sent out more waves he slashed he plumed, and almost sent out lightning forgetting the fact that he was soaking wet thanks to Becket.

From the crowd, TJ observed how John was only avoiding his opponent's attacks, but not attacking his opponent. It was almost as if he was afraid to hurt him even after all the pain he had caused him. TJ was right. John was afraid of hurting Terry, because he knew that even with his own extremely accurate precision, Terry's frantic actions would be his undoing. There was another reason, a much deeper one. One that went back six years. His dodges were beginning to anger Terry.

"Stop running away and fight! Where'd you learn to be such a chicken, chicken? It had to be your mother!"

It was at this that John's attitude changed. Nobody, especially not Terry, had the right to talk about he and Riki's mother like that, likewise their father. His want to avoid injuring His opponent left him instantly. He pointed his wants at the two water filled trenches on either side of the gym and squeezed the handles, freezing them solid. Everyone gasped. It took an extraordinary amount of power and skill to do this, and it took even more to do what he did next. John lifted his arms, and with it came the water from the trenches. Huge rectangular blocks of ice slowly rose up into the air. He was straining his arms and it hurt tremendously, but he didn't care. "Don't you EVER talk about my mother like that!" screamed John, the blocks of ice now completely out of the trenches. "Ever!". He brought his arms together quickly, and the giant blocks of ice followed. Terry flinched, ready the deadly painful smoosh. It didn't come. He opened his eyes and almost touching him on both sides was ice. John couldn't hold it up anymore and he fell to his knees and bent over onto the ground, his head buried in his arms, beginning to cry. The blocks of ice fell with a legitimately earth shattering bang. And they melted back into the trenches. The room was silent. Terry had just used one of the worst insults he could. One about someone's mother. In a time when barely anyone could remember theirs. From the deflated form of John came the unmistakable, "after everything she did for you. After everything WE did for you!".


End file.
